Nick Davis fined, loses hunting privileges for 2 years
Nick Davis, the Elkin man who attached a huge set of shed antlers to the skull of a small buck and claimed he had killed a state-record deer last fall, pleaded guilty on March 31 of one count of illegal hunting, was fined almost $800 and had his hunting license revoked for two years.
Davis was ordered in court in the Surry County town of Dobson to pay court costs of $180 and a $604 replacement fee for killing a small buck with a rifle on the second day of archery season. His hunting license was also revoked for two years. In return for the guilty plea, two other related charges were dropped.
According to Chris Harris, a wildlife enforcement officer with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, Davis pleaded guilty to a count of taking a deer during a closed season.
Davis had claimed in mid-September that he killed a buck with enormous, non-typical antlers the first week of archery season in Surry County. According to officers, he had obtained the antlers, sheds, from a deer farm in Pennsylvania and attached them to the skull of a small buck he killed with a rifle on the second day of archery season. He posed for photos with the buck and notified media outlets that he had taken a buck that was most certainly the biggest non-typical ever killed in North Carolina by a bowhunter.
An official scorer with the N.C. Bowhunters Association measured the buck within a day or two and agreed that the buck would score almost 210 points — 30 points higher than the existing state record. After the required 30-day drying period, the buck would be able to be officially scored and become the state-record whitetail.
However, besieged by phone calls from people who couldn’t believe such a small-bodied buck could carry a huge rack, enforcement officers began investigating, and about a week after he surfaced, Davis admitted he’d faked the whole thing.
Officers charged him with one count of hunting during a closed season because he took the small buck with a rifle during archery season, and they charged him with illegal possession of a whitetail and failure to properly tag an animal. The latter two charges were dropped.
Click here to read the intial story on Nick Davis and his deer.
