Ohio's Top 10 Freaky, Gnarly, Genetically Superior Non-Typical Producing Whitetail Counties

Do you dream of one day shooting the nastiest, gnarliest old whitetail complete with kickers, drop-tines and double main beams? Imagine your face on the cover of North American Whitetail Magazine as millions of other hunters read your story with anticipation and envy. To help with that endeavor we embarked to see if Ohio has any counties that more consistently produced whitetails of this caliber than others. You know, the mecca of genetics! What we found is that every county has the potential of having a few "Milk Men" bucks (the sibling that does not look like he belongs in your family)

Take for example "The Beatty Buck" which was shot by Mike Beatty in 2000. It was harvested in Greene County which does not even come close to making our list of Top 10 destinations however it is a 39-point Mack Daddy that is the largest non-typical harvested in Ohio by a hunter and scores 304 6/8". Just for the record Greene County has not had any Non-Typical's entered in the past 5 years and only 24 in the past 75 years. The beauty of Ohio is that the buck you are looking for could show up anywhere!

To put things in perspective, since records have been kept there are 3293 Non-Typical whitetails that have been entered since 1947 or about 45 per year. Of those 405 were harvested from 2016 -2020 which is 81 per year or an average of about 1 per county per year.. How exciting is that? The good times are not over! We are living in their midst!

DATA

The chart below shows all the Non-Typical's entered into the Ohio Big Bucks Club for the past 75 years by county using all legal weapons. It is interesting to note that 2016 leads all years with total entries in a single year with 147 entries. Also interesting is that all 88 counties have produced record book non-typicals. This data was obtained from the Ohio Big Bucks Club and minimum score for a non-typical to be entered is 160"

The question is which counties are trending best over the last 5 years? Below is a chart that shows the past 5 years and as would be expected there are some surprises.It appears Ross, Morrow and Morgan counties are currently producing more huge non-typicals than the periennal favorites such as Coshocton, Guernsy and Tuscarwas counties.

How about some of the sleeper counties that very rarely ever get mentioned such as Ashland, Wyandot or Hancock? Also where is Adams County?  While most people have turned their attention to spring and summer activities it is not to early to be planning and obtaining permission for this fall. The old saying is "You can be the best hunter in the world and not kill a big buck if you don't hunt where they live". Although we know it is possible to kill a mega-giant about anywhere in Ohio hopefully the data above will give you some insight as to where to direct your focus. 

To verify this data and to peform other inquiries FOLLOW THIS LINK

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