Jackson Berner was at work when one of his remote trail cameras captured a photo of a giant velvet buck the morning of October 20. The 21-year-old commercial insulator was on the job in southwest Ohio when he got the early morning picture of the deer near his hunting treestand.
“I said ‘Holy Smoke’ when I saw the size of the deer and its velvet,” Berner tells Outdoor Life. “The buck came by my camera at 7:50 a.m., and I’d never seen it before.”
Berner wanted to be in his treestand the following morning in case the buck happened to walk by the spot again.
“I asked my boss if I could have the next day off to hunt,” Berner says. “I showed him photos of the buck, and he said to go and get that deer.”
The following morning on Oct. 21, Berner was 22 feet up a tree sitting in a lock-on stand near where his trail camera had gotten photos of the velvet buck the previous morning.
“My brother-in-law told me he believed I was gonna shoot that buck,” explains Berner, of Springfield, Ohio. “I just had a feeling I’d get that deer, too.”
He climbed into his treestand just as it was nearing legal shooting light, a bit after 7 a.m.
“Legal shooting time was 7:22 a.m., and the velvet buck showed up at 7:30, like the previous day,” he says. “The velvet buck had been with a smaller buck on camera the first day I had photos of him. I first saw the little 4-point buck on the trail that morning, and not far behind him was the big buck.”
When the big deer got closer it stopped and looked up directly at the hunter.
“I froze, and when he dropped his head and walked a few steps, I drew my bow and took the shot at 15 yards.”
His 62-pound Darton bow sent an arrow tipped with a G5 Megameat 3-blade expandable broadhead. The arrow hit home and passed through.
“My adrenaline was on fire, as I watched him run out of sight about 60 yards away,” Berner says. “I decided to leave the woods and come back in an hour with some help to track my deer.”
Berner returned with his father Jason, cousin and brother-in-law. It was an easy-to-follow blood trail, and the party found the deer dead only 50 yards beyond from where Berner had lost sight of it that morning.
They loaded the deer into a Polaris side-by-side and then started field dressing the deer.
“We got to looking at him for gutting and thought perhaps it had no testicles, which is common for late-season velvet bucks,” Berner says. “But he had his man parts. The only thing we could figure is his testes had been injured somehow, and that resulted in him keeping his velvet so late in the year.”
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Berner took his velvet buck to Toby Hughes, a popular Buckmasters scorer who measured the 16-pointer rack at 191 inches. Hughes says it’s one of the biggest velvet bucks ever taken in Ohio.
Berner delivered his deer to a meat processor, and the butcher told him he found a bullet in the deer’s hindquarters. Berner says the deer showed no signs of having been shot previously, and its hide was completely healed over.
“One other thing about that buck, is when I spotted it first on my trail camera, it was near where my fiance and I are planning to get married,” Berner says. “That’s pretty amazing.”