Bowhunter retrieves 16-point Buck using a clue from an earlier Trail Cam photo

Miranda Farson and her husband Grant were shooting archery from the same tree on October 4. The two sat in separate lock-on stands 20 feet high in the big maple tree on a piece of private land in Morrow County, Ohio. Miranda and Grant looked in different directions, waiting for one of the two target bombs they had seen on the site earlier.

“One of them was a great 10-pointer,” says Miranda Outdoor living. “The other buck had an unusual rack, so I named him ‘Wonky Donkey’ because he had so many points.”

The Farsons had taken trail camera photos of both deer. Miranda says the 10-point buck was a regular visitor to the small, 50-acre farm, while the large, atypical buck came and went. She says the two bucks usually came out of the brush at night and ran along a fence into the nearby cornfield.

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“That night we expected to see the 10-pointer, and Grant was going to shoot it, but I wanted Wonky Donkey,” Miranda explains. “That evening, around 6:30 p.m., Wonky Donkey got out and walked down a path that led to our maple tree.”

The buck headed straight for Grant, stopping twenty yards away to rub his rack on some saplings. The brush was too thick for Grant to shoot, so the two hunters waited and watched from their stands.

‘Finally he turned and walked straight towards me, very close. He stopped just eight yards away and offered me an almost straight down shot,” says Miranda. “That’s not the shot I practiced. But I pulled, anchored, grunted to stop him, and released my trigger.

Her arrow struck the darting buck right behind his shoulder, went all the way through his chest, and came out the other side. It was a good hit and Wonky Donkey ran away through a thorn field about 75 yards away.

“We lost sight of him when he got into thick cover,” Miranda says. ‘We didn’t find the arrow and the blood trail was very bad. We started to doubt how good the shot was, especially without finding the arrow.

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The Farsons left after dark that evening and returned the next morning. After six hours of searching, they still couldn’t find a trail of blood, so they gave up and went home. But later that day, Grant returned to the farm to check their trail cameras, and saw that someone had taken a photo of Wonky Donkey days earlier. From the photo, it appeared the buck was heading toward a nearby creek bed that Grant was aware of. This was the only clue he needed. Grant walked to the creek bed, where he immediately found the dead buck.

“It’s hard to understand how far that buck traveled without leaving a big trail of blood,” Grant says. “Miranda smoked that deer and there was even a good exit wound behind his shoulder. Yet the deer still traveled just over 200 yards before falling.”

The Farsons took the atypical rack to Buckmasters scorer Lori Hughes, who earned an official BTR score of 160 2/8 inches. The rack had 16 points that could be scored, including two trap prongs that were broken due to fighting.

“We have camera shots of Wonky Donkey fighting the 10-pointer that Grant still wants to tag this year,” says Miranda. “That buck still regularly appears on our trail cameras.”