The Ortolani Buck

30-Point Crossbow Buck

As told by Bob Ortolani

On December 18, 2016 a deer came out of the thicket and into a shooting lane a couple of seconds later. Down he went with one shot from my crossbow at about 10 yards. He dropped in his tracks and the whole thing took about 15 seconds. There was no time to get nervous... The End.

Backing up a little... the previous day I pulled two camera cards and the first picture was a doozy! A daylight picture of the giant buck. The first I had seen of this buck since last season. The increase in rack size from last year's pictures was stunning. I think I threw up in my mouth a little. Ok not really, but the excitement level was pretty high to say the least!

Backing up even more... the previous three or four years we had this buck on camera and watched the one drop tine evolve into two drops during the last year. The buck was estimated to be 6-1/2 years old

My hunting area consists of about five acres behind my auto repair shop, a postage stamp if you will. It's terrible. There is an active park as one border with houses and more small woods on two sides, then there is the street with my shop as another border. After posting the deer on social media, folks on the other side of town chimed in with their sightings and sent me pictures along with their stories. The other side of town is interesting in that it is on the other side of the Seneca River here in Baldwinsville, New York. Most sightings of the big buck occurred on the other side of the river. The deer must have swam the river every fall when the pressure was on. He would hide in the backyards eat from the bird feeders and was very good at staying out of sight. The stories from others included that it was shot in the foot once by a "city slicker" on the railroad tracks.

The butcher noted the buck had a major hip injury and a healed broken rear leg, likely from a car hit. He walked with a limp. Speculation from the scoring committee was that if it did not sustain the injury and the rack progressed as nature intended, it would have likely been the largest non-typical buck taken in New York by a wide margin. As it was, the final score was 229.6" with 30 scorable points, which puts it at the 4th largest non-typical taken by any means in New York state.

I tell my friends that superior skills, relentless determination, and sitting out in miserable conditions in an area that "the big ones" hide out in is the way you get a big one. But everyone, including myself, knows that it's 100% luck!

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