Huge Rockingham County buck grossed 168 inches
When Jeff Wright of Eden, N.C. leveled his .44 Marlin at a huge Rockingham County buck on Nov. 20, it wasn’t the first trophy whitetail he’d ever looked down the barrel at.
The buck, which grossed 168 inches, was the seventh of his long hunting career that breached the 160-inch mark, including three from North Carolina.
“I had watched this deer for a couple of years, along with several more,” said Wright, a Caswell County native who had returned to North Carolina in 2017 after 14 years in Oklahoma running a deer farm and serving in wildlife rehabilitation for the Sooner State.
“I had watched this deer, watched him all summer. And I’d definitely identified him from last year,” Wright said. “He got gone about the same time the acorns started falling. Then he disappeared for 10 or 12 days. I’d seen him multiple times coming in late, but I’d never gotten a shot at him before.”
The morning of Nov. 20, Wright said the buck came wandering in, trailing two mature does to a spot where he had been feeding with a feed/mineral supplement that his company, Wright Whitetail Minerals, produces.
“He followed two big does to the food about 6:45. He was running a little late,” said Wright, who dropped the buck at 80 yards with his lever-action rifle.
Wright shot the huge Rockingham County buck from a lock-on stand
“I am really partial to that gun. We have some land in Virginia, in Bland County, and with all the (mountain) laurel up there, it’s the perfect gun. I have a Swift scope on it; it’s a good scope for the money and fits the gun,” he said.
“I was in a lock-on stand. It sits back in the woods in a wooded lot and looks out on a 35-acre hayfield. They have scrapes all around it every year.”
Wright’s buck, which weighed 225 pounds on a set of tobacco scales, carried a main-frame 5×5 rack with one sticker point. The inside spread was 20 inches, the outside spread 22 1/2. The buck had four different tines at least 10 inches long, main beams that measured 22 4/8 and 21 2/8 inches, and had base circumferences of better than 5 1/4 inches. Wayne Cox, a veteran Buckmasters scorer, put a tape on the buck the week after it was killed. Wright expects it to net in in the low 160s.
His biggest North Carolina buck came from close to the old Tyson chicken plant near Pittsboro. it netted 168 5/8.
Wright started producing his mineral supplement feed when he was running a deer farm in Oklahoma. When he returned to North Carolina in 2017, he got set up with a mill and brought his product to the market at the 2019 Dixie Deer Classic. It includes a number of minerals, plus soybeans, corn, sunflower seeds and peanuts.
“You can see a 25 to 30% increase (in buck size) in a year if you use it correctly,” he said. “It’s all we feed with here.”
_____________________
Bag-A-Buck
Congratulations to Wright, who is now entered in our Bag-A-Buck contest. This makes him eligible for a number of great prizes. That includes the grand prize, a two-day, two-man hunt at Cherokee Run Hunting Lodge. Click here to view the Bag-A-Buck gallery or to enter the contest yourself.
Be the first to comment