It was the evening of October 25 when Joe McConnell, a traditional bowhunter from central Ohio, climbed into a ladder stand with a backdrop of heavy cover.
McConnell was hunting with a longbow in a narrow strip of woods that he owns. The spot was overlooking a travel lane deer were using to enter a large field of standing corn.
“I was really after a nice 10-point buck I had on trail cameras,” McConnell tells Outdoor Life. “The wind was perfect that evening, blowing right in my face. I was looking forward to filling my first landowner tag with a deer on my own property.”
“I’d made a mock scrape in front of my stand, with a licking branch above it about 12 yards from my ladder,” says the 38-year-old archer. “I heard him in the corn about six rows in, and he came to check the scrape.
“I saw his rack above the standing corn field coming to me, and when he stopped broadside quartering away at 12 yards, I took my shot.”
The buck was not the 10-point he was after. Instead, it was a dandy 8-pointer that McConnell couldn’t pass up.
McConnell drew his 64-inch, 55-pound longbow he’d made from an Osage orange tree limb. Then, shooting instinctively, he released a 26-inch arrow he’d made of cane and fletched with white turkey feathers.
His arrow hit the buck perfectly behind the shoulder, the super-sharp stone broadhead he handmade drove deep into the deer’s chest.
“I saw him race and tear through the corn field,” says McConnell, who owns a hardwood flooring and restoration business. “I heard him crashing away through corn stalks, and then nothing.”
The bowman found a good blood trail where the buck stood, and the trail was easy to follow through the corn.
“He only went about 75 yards before falling dead,” he says. “My stone broadhead did an incredible job, driving through its liver, a lung, and smashing into a rib on the opposite side of the buck. The arrow point hit bone and stopped or it would have completely gone through the buck’s hide on the opposite side.
“Everything really came together for me with that deer. I’ve taken lots of animals with the bows and arrows I’ve made. But it’s the first deer I’ve taken with a stone broadhead that I knapped myself – and it was devastating.”
McConnell has taken plenty of deer and wild hogs with traditional archery gear he’s made. He also shot a buffalo with his traditional equipment, and a stone point head he’d made specifically for the hunt.
He called some friends who helped get his big 8-point buck out of the field. The field-dressed buck weighed 180 pounds at the processor. It had an estimated live weight of well over 200 pounds.
He will eventually have the deer scored via Buckmasters, and his taxidermist estimated the rack to be about 140 inches.
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McConnell models his canted bow shooting style after legendary archer Howard Hill. He leans forward when drawing his bow, anchors his arrow at the corner of his mouth, and uses his bare hand holding his bow as an arrow rest.
“I got started in archery when I was only 14,” McConnell says. “It’s been a lot of fun learning about making bows, arrows, and now stone broadheads. Traditional equipment is remarkably efficient bowhunting gear.”