“My dad and I had been hunting on a nearby farm in the morning and I missed a doe. Later we were still hunting and we saw a really big buck and missed getting a shot at him. But then we had to go home and get my sister Jessica to hunt the afternoon,” related Cody. “In the afternoon we went to my dad’s friend’s farm where dad knew there were lots of deer.”

Cody, Jessica and their father David Kelch were lined out along the east side of a woodlot with their backs to a picked soybean field. There was a scrape line just inside the woods and David had been freshening it every other day with Jackie’s doe estrus scent to keep the deer in the area interested. Jessica was on the south end of the line about 200 yards from Cody, who was in the center. David was about 300 yards to the north and 200 yards west through the woods.

Cody was equipped with a 20 ga. H&R rifled barrel, single shot mounted with a Thompson Center scope. It was the second day of the Ohio shotgun season, and the cold overcast day was nearly ended. Then at 20 minutes to five, Cody heard something moving and soon spotted a doe moving along the scrape line behind him and about 70 yards away.

“I didn’t think any deer were going to come up the way I had been watching cause the wind was blowing the wrong way, so I was sitting and looking around the other way. When I heard something, I turned around and this doe was coming right up the scrape line towards me just like my dad said they would,” Cody continued. “But my gun was by the tree and I had to wait till the doe couldn’t see me to pick it up. When the doe moved its head behind a tree, I moved closer to my gun and picked it up, and then I got turned
around.”

The youngster shouldered the gun and leaned up against the tree to steady his aim. The doe was closing the distance at a steady pace but was not running. As she got closer, Cody realized that a buck was following very close behind.

“At first, I just saw the doe and I was going to shoot, then when I got my gun up, I saw the buck right behind with his nose right under her tail. When he lifted his head up and I saw the antlers, I just decided to shoot the buck,” Cody spoke quite matter-of-factly. “The first shot, I shot him in the back spine. He kind of humped up, but he didn’t fall down, then he just didn’t know where he was going, he ran a little bit in one direction and stopped and then ran another way and stopped, then he ran right towards me. I thought he saw me and I was afraid he was going to charge right into me. I reloaded the shotgun and aimed right at the chest as the buck came towards me, I pulled the trigger and then he ran a few more yards and just dropped.” related Cody.

“I reloaded the gun and then went over to where it fell and just stood there waiting for someone to come.” The buck was about 50 yards away when Cody fired the first shot and about 30 yards when he fired the second time. The buck fell about twenty yards in front of him.

Meanwhile, on the far side of the woods, Dad had heard two shots about a minute apart and was thinking that each of his kids may have had a shot at a running deer. He quickly moved towards them and as he came close by, Cody hollered out, “Hey dad, come see my big buck!”

“As I came up on the deer I was stunned, speechless was more like it, the rack was huge, bigger than I could imagine,” David said, “I had to sit down on a tree stump. It was a good while before I could think straight. What an incredible buck my son had taken.”

They called out to Jessica and she quickly joined them by the fallen monster. They looked at the deer and the rack and counted the points several times. David finally decided there were seventeen points all told. And several inches of the right main beam was broken off. Cody had not yet come to realize the enormity of the rack on this buck, it would be a little longer before the realization would come.

The three of them pulled and dragged the deer to the edge of the woods where they cleaned up the animal for some photos before field dressing. The huge buck was then hauled out to the check station in Wellington, Ohio. It was here after tagging and examination by a local game warden, and congratulations by several onlookers that Cody began to appreciate his good fortune and shooting skills. A large crowd of well wishers seemed to materialize as if from nowhere to admire this awesome trophy.

The deer weighed 174 pounds field-dressed and sported 17 points, 12 on the right and 5 on the left. The Buckmasters score for this buck is 189 2/8 inches of antler, with 24 3/8 of those inches being irregular. It is an incredible trophy, for an incredible ten year old hunter!

A final comment from Cody, “If it wasn’t for my dad and all he knows about hunting, I wouldn’t be hunting and I would not have gotten this big buck.”

In the spring of 2000, the rack was taken to Columbus, Ohio for the annual Deer & Turkey Expo where it was measured for the Ohio records by the Buckeye Big Buck Club. The rack brought Cody third place honors for the 1999 season for shotgun harvested deer.