The trophy buck had 153 inches of headgear
Logan Stuart of Snow Camp, N.C. punched a hole in one of 2021’s great typical whitetails when he shot a 5×5 trophy buck that sported a rack measuring 153 inches on Nov. 23.
Stuart shot the buck with a Horton crossbow from his Loc-On stand 35 feet up an Guilford County pine tree. Horton had a small history with the buck.
“He showed up on trail cameras 2 weeks before I shot him,” said Stuart. “I also had his trail-camera pictures from two years earlier.”
Stuart was high in the center of an open block of hardwoods with an edge that bordered a bedding thicket.
“I was about 120 yards off this thicket in the open woods,” he said.
Stuart had scattered Wright Whitetail Minerals on the ground for two season while hunting this buck.
“A buddy of mine, Ryan Fuller, who let me do work on his farms, gave me permission to hunt,” Stuart said. “We made a mock scrape about 3 weeks before I hunted this deer.”
The 24-year-old hunter climbed into his stand after 2 p.m. that afternoon and spotted the buck in the nearby thicket chasing does.
Stuart shot the buck from 7 yards away
“I watched him for a long time,” Stuart said. “I could see this big-bodied deer chasing does in the thicket. He finally bumped six does out of there. Two does came down a trail and one split off to the right and one to the left. I was pretty sure he’d follow one, and I’d get a shot.”
The trophy buck finally turned broadside to Stuart at 5 p.m. He leveled his crossbow’s sights against the deer’s right side. The buck was standing 7 yards from the base of his tree when Stuart pulled the trigger. The arrow buried in its side.
The shaft, which was tipped with a Trokar fixed-blade broadhead, stuck out of the deer’s left side by 4 inches. Stuart watched as the deer mule-kicked and ran straight away, then turned to the left.
“I heard his rack hit some small saplings. But after that, I didn’t hear anything,” he said. “I thought I’d missed him.”
After climbing down and finding a large blood trail but no visible evidence of the deer, Stuart called Fuller. They teamed up and trailed the buck approximately 100 yards. They found the deer piled up in a bedding area surrounded by multiple scrapes.
“We estimated his live weight at 160 pounds,” Stuart said. “It’s my best buck, and I want to thank Fuller for giving me the chance to hunt him.”
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