Few things are as heartwarming as a father-son duo sharing a successful hunt. When the deer in question is a well-known brute the pair have hunted for several years, the story gets that much sweeter. Come along as a hard-hunting youth bags an Ohio booner, sitting next to his dad beaming with pride.
“My son Ashton Copas has Down syndrome and has hunted this buck with me for three years,” Tim Copas wrote. “We use HuntStand and check the wind and weather forecast daily before hunting. On Nov. 19, during Ohio’s youth gun season, HuntStand forecasted the wind wouldn’t be great for our
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existing blinds. So we moved a blind from the other side of the property. We set it at the top of the field we were hunting, to be able to effectively hunt this buck. We hunt 100 acres of private property that is almost all hayfield.
“Ashton is 12 and loves everything outdoors; his favorite is shed hunting. We started getting photos of this buck two years ago, when I figured he was 4 ½ years old. Last year we got maybe a dozen photos of him, all night photos except for one.
“This year we got many photos of this buck, but all were night images except on Nov. 11, when he was in front of our blind at noon. We saw him in the evening while hunting a week before Ashton bagged him, but it was dark before he came in front of us that evening, at 30 yards.
“Hunting from the newly set blind the evening of Nov. 19, two mature does emerged from the area where we were expecting the buck. Ashton was thinking about shooting one, but I liked the ‘live decoy’ idea, so I told him to wait a bit—the ‘Big Tenbuck,’ as Ashton called him—might come out. Just about 30 seconds later, there he was, coming in on a string. The buck walked in to 60-70 yards, then he turned broadside, slightly quartering to us, and stopped.
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We had the Ruger American Predator in 350 Legend locked in a Bog Pod, already pointed in the direction where the buck emerged. We made a few minor adjustments, and Ashton did the rest. When he pulled the trigger the buck dropped in his tracks. It was tears and hollers from then on! The 17-point buck has a gross green score of 180 7/8. Thank you HuntStand!”
