Flock of geese begins NC hunter’s trail to huge Randolph County buck
How could a flock of Canada geese wind up putting a huge Randolph County buck into the crosshairs of an Asheboro, N.C., hunter?
Honk if you want to know.
Tommy Daniel, a 49-year-old shop teacher at Southwest Randolph High School, killed an enormous buck last Saturday on the opening day of muzzleloader season on property he had permission to hunt because his 23-year-old son, Reece, loves to goose hunt.
Daniel’s monster, main-frame 5×5 with a huge non-typical tine and a smaller crab claw, has been scored at 169 5/8 inches. He met the buck on a trail camera just a week or so after getting permission to hunt a 100-acre farm around Oct. 1.
“My son is a big goose and duck hunter, and he does deer hunt,” Daniel said. “He was coming home from work one day and noticed a bunch of geese piling into a cut cornfield. He stopped and asked the owner if he could goose hunt.
“It turned out, the guy was about his age, he’d just bought the property and was about to plant oats. And he was glad to have somebody who wanted to kill the geese. He said he’d just told himself, ‘I need somebody to kill ‘em.’
“We didn’t get permission to hunt the property until the end of September or first of October. We went out and rode around with him one Sunday afternoon to see everything. When we asked about leasing it for deer hunting, he was good with that.
Randolph County buck showed up on trail cam immediately
“We went in a week after we’d ridden around, and my son decided where he wanted to put his ground blind. And I picked a place I wanted to hunt and build a ground blind. I put it out and put out a bag of corn and trail cameras. The first time we pulled the cards, he was there on three nights. We knew he was huge.
“I told Reece we couldn’t go in and scout, and we weren’t gonna be able to bowhunt there. If we did, he was gonna leave and go live on somebody else’s place.”
Daniel’s conclusion was solidified by trail-camera photos through October.
“I got to check my cards three times before I was able to go in and hunt,” he said. “Every time I checked a card, it would be two or three days before he’d show up again on camera. Every time I checked the card (on a Sunday), the buck would show up on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday — all at night. I was thinking the deer was watching me come and go. I think he was bedding about 100 yards from my blind.”
Daniel had $13 in his ground box blind, which he cobbled together with scrap lumber, a couple of camouflage tarps from Harbor Freight and plexiglass from Lowe’s for four windows. The blind sat watching a small, fallow pasture area, separated from a larger cut cornfield by a 20-yard wide swath of hardwoods.
Big buck showed up on a dead run
Daniel had trail-cam photos of only five deer: his trophy, two smaller bucks and two does. That was it. He admitted being afraid that the buck would bust him as soon as he walked from his truck to the blind. But last Saturday, Oct. 31, the wind was blowing in his face when he got out of the truck, and he slipped into the blind.
“If the wind had been a little different, I’d have turned around and left when I got out of the truck. But the wind was in my face — an ideal situation.”
Daniel, sitting about 400 yards from his son, had no action at all the first hour or so in the blind. Around 7:45 he admitted thinking nothing was going to happen and planning to move his trail cameras to a higher knoll on the field.
“It was about 7:45, and I had lowered my window and reached into my pack. And when I looked up, he was on a dead run across the field, headed for the woods,” Daniel said. “I bleated and hollered at him to try and get him to stop. He slowed down and looked at me, maybe two jumps from the fence, and I shot him.
Daniel shot the buck with a Thompson Center muzzleloader
“I think he cleared that fence by two feet, and I could see him taking out through the timber. But he stopped, and he had his tail down. So that was a good sign. Then he flicked his tail. When we went to track him, I missed where he crossed the fence by one post. Reece went back toward the blind and found one spot of blood. Then we found where he jumped the fence, and from there on, it was pouring out of both sides. He went about 40 yards.”
At 100 yards, the 250-grain, .50-caliber TC Superglide bullet, fired from his TC Omega muzzleloader, had taken the buck perfectly behind the front shoulder as the buck bounced away, quartering away from Daniel. The bullet split the buck’s heart and came out in front of the off shoulder.
Daniel saw no ground shrinkage in the Randolph County buck
“He was even bigger than I thought from the trail-cam photos,” he said.
The buck carried a main-frame 5×5 rack with a 20 1/2-inch inside spread. The main beams were 23 inches each, with a tine on each beam almost 10 inches long and a second tine on each beam almost 8 inches long. Standing out was a 10 2/8-inch “sticker” tine on the right antler that made a 90-degree turn forward a couple of inches from the tip, and a 2-inch crab claw at the end of the right beam. The buck scored 169 5/8 inches gross. With the exception of the two non-typical points, it was an extremely symmetrical rack.
A check of his trail cameras after the kill showed Daniel one final photo of the buck. Taken just a few seconds before Daniel pulled the trigger, the photo showed the buck in a dead run across the face of the camera.
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Bag-A-Buck contest
Congratulations to Daniel, who is now entered in our Bag-A-Buck contest, making him eligible for a number of great prizes. This includes the grand prize — a 2-day, two-man hunt at Cherokee Run Hunting Lodge. Click here to view the Bag-A-Buck gallery or to enter the contest yourself.
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