Not The Most Interesting Day In The Woods

" Not the Most Exciting Day in the Wood's" Say's Mike Beatty

By Dave Freeman

Mike Beatty has become famous for taking a magnificent world record buck near Xenia, Ohio. Any of us would have thought this to be the most exciting day in his life, but Mike told us otherwise. This is how he told Ohio Valley Outdoors his story.

"It was the first day of Ohio's gun season. We were hunting in Southern Ohio and were set up on a ridge where we had seen deer in previous years. We had a pretty big deer spotted. We had found out later it was a one hundred forty class buck that had come in from behind us. I told my hunting partner, 'When ever you're, ready shoot him'. He whispered that he didn't have a clean shot at his vitals so he passed on the buck. I looked later at what he said blocked his clean shot and it was only some small oak branches.

Later that day we set up in the same area a little farther up the ridge. At about 4PM we had another buck come in, traveling an old logging road. We were sitting side by side against a tree and I told him, 'When ever he stops, shoot him'.

The deer went into a small ravine and when he came out he stopped. One shot fifty yards away. A double lung shot. It was a three-point. The shooter was Andrew Beatty, nine-years old shooting a New England Arms single shot twenty gauge. And that was the most exciting day I had ever had in the woods."

The most exciting day in his life, although less than a month earlier, in Green County, Ohio, Mike harvested a 39-point buck. Mike, while hunting on private land in Greene County on an overcast day arrowed the buck that most of us only dream about. He was hunting from a treestand using deer lure and a grunt tube when he got the shot of a lifetime.

The Beatty buck is the largest non-typical whitetail ever killed by a hunter. The buck scored 304 6/8's by a Boone & Crocket scorer. And even though Pope and Young has refused to recognize the buck because of a 75% bow let-off, every other bow hunter in the country recognizes it as a world record.

Regardless of Pope and Young's refusal, Mike has certainly received a great deal of publicity for that buck; being signed to do shows for Gander Mountain and also exhibit ten reproductions currently being produced of the buck.

Even though Mike has told his story to thousands of hunters through shows and articles written about his buck, he remains adamant that when Andrew, his hunting buddy, squeezed off on his three-point, it was the most exciting day he ever had in the woods.

Andrew, who is now ten has hunted with Dad for several years for small game, and even hunted this year with a crossbow for deer with no luck. Andrew's hunting career reached new heights however on the first day of Ohio gun season when he harvested his first deer.

You fathers out there who have started your youngsters out hunting or fishing can understand what Mike Beatty is feeling when he makes the statement that when his son harvest that buck, "that was the most exciting day he has ever spent in the woods". When Mike was asked what next? He just said. "I have a six-year old daughter, Brittany, who might start to hunt soon!"