Day one of Ohio’s 2018 whitetail deer gun season started off well for Andrew Kittle near Burr Oak State Park as he took a large buck 45-minutes into the hunt. Using his new Ruger .450 caliber rifle, Kittle and his brother Dusty, surprised the large male whitetail as they were heading to their tree stands.
“I couldn’t believe it.” Andrew said. “We were creeping very slowly up the trail together, and just as we are about to split up these two deer rose twenty-yards to our right.”
Kittle lifted his brand new rifle and scope, training it toward the buck. “Just as I was lifting the gun, this dude took off full speed and raced up the hill. I spotted him in the scope, he jumped and I fired.”
The large-caliber lead entered through the top hind quarter and exited from the spine, knocking the deer to the ground, but he wasn’t done.
“We had to chase hime downhill for a couple hundred yards to place a final kill shot,” he said.
In the end, the Kittle boys came through with another Ohio trophy buck weighing in at 170 lbs when field dressed, with a Boone & Crockett rack measurement of 138-inches.