North Carolina’s mountains produced the biggest buck taken last season by a muzzleloader. Here are the details.
Western North Carolina’s mountains can’t carry a large number of whitetail deer because the habitat just doesn’t match the rest of the state, so trophy bucks from the high country aren’t too common.
But last October, Pete McKinney of Green Mountain dropped a 195-pound Mitchell County bruiser with a nearly-perfect 10-point rack that grossed 156 6/8 and netted 150 7/8 inches, the biggest buck taken in the Tarheel State last year by a hunter toting a muzzleloader.
Few people knew about the buck, other than McKinney, his family and a few friends, because the 56-year-old Yancey County native couldn’t enter the deer in the Dixie Deer Classic’s big-buck contest, even though he had the rack scored at the show in Raleigh. Why? His job as a corrections officer at a facility near Spruce Pine kept him from being able to stay in Raleigh the whole weekend and have the buck recognized as a contest winner.
“I drove to Raleigh and got the rack scored, but I couldn’t stay for the Sunday awards,” he said. “I had to be at work by midnight Sunday, and I didn’t know anyone who could drive (7 ½ hours) to bring it back to me.”
Actually, killing a trophy buck was the farthest thing on McKinney’s mind on Oct. 11, 2014. He had bears on his mind. The first segment of the western bear season opened on Monday, Oct. 13, and first the first time, baiting for bear was legal during the first six days of that season.
“We don’t grow large deer with big antlers out here much,” he said. “It was the last day of muzzleloader season in Mitchell County, and I was going around to bait for bear with apples and corn.”
Still, he carried his .50-caliber CVA Apex muzzleloader with him, because he’d seen a decent buck a few times but passed up shots.
“I hadn’t hunted him last year, but I knew he was in the area,” he said. “I’m an off-and-on member of a hunting club that leases an 8,000-acre tract, and the club has strict rules about the size of bucks we can shoot. They have to score 130 (inches) or have four points on each side extending beyond their ears.”
McKinney had passed up a buck in 2012 and 2013 that he believed was the buck he killed last fall. He was on a ladder stand on a ridge in 2012 when the buck appeared.
“It must’ve been late November or early December,” McKinney said. “I rattled, and he came in to my right and circled the ridge behind me. He … looked like a 2 1/2-year-old deer, but he still probably weighed only about 150 pounds.”
The next year, he saw the buck again.
“A little doe came right up to my (ground box),” McKinney said. “I could’ve reached out and touched her. She was looking down the hill, and I thought she might be looking at a buck, but I saw a bear walking up the road. Then, she looked up the hill to my right and took off.”
McKinney turned his head and saw the buck in some brush.
“He had a really good rack and a lot of horns,” he said.
McKinney’s son, Brinton, also saw the buck in a food plot in 2013, but failing shooting light prevented a shot.
“We called him ‘Jumbo,’” McKinney said, “because his body had gotten so big.”
The McKinneys planned to sweeten their stands with apples the last day of October 2014 muzzleloader season in preparation for bear season, but Brinton, a school teacher, had other duties, so his father decided to do those tasks.
After loading his ATV with apples and corn, McKinney drove to a stand at noon, unloaded some bait, pulled a SIM card from a nearby trail camera because he hadn’t checked its photos in a week, then drove to three other bait sites to repeat the process. His last stop was Brinton’s stand, at 4:30 p.m.
“That’s when divine intervention stepped in — and the buck’s addiction to golden delicious apples,” he said. “After I put out apples and corn, I was going to climb into his stand, but it started to rain. I knew it’d be tricky coming down the mountain.”
Taking his time, he safely descended, and by the time he was within 200 yards of his truck, he came to a trail intersection.
“I was frustrated, a little wet and maybe a little angry because I’d left Brinton’s stand, so I decided I would go to a different box stand — but I took a wrong turn and went right instead of left,” McKinney said. “I knew the way. I said ‘Why am I going this way? I’ve got to get up at 4 a.m. tomorrow to go to work.’ But I’m a Christian and believe in God and Jesus Christ, and I believe He spoke to me.”
He headed up the mountainside for a mile and stopped the ATV about 100 yards from his son’s box stand.
“It’s a really nice box blind near a one-acre food plot we planted in clover and other stuff for deer,” McKinney said, “but it had grown up a little.”
By then it was about 5:30 p.m. McKinney decided to watch the food plot until 7 p.m.
“It was foggy, then it’d rain, then the fog would lift a little,” he said. “It got to be 7 p.m., and I said I’d wait a little longer.”
But by 7:14 p.m., he hadn’t seen anything.
“I was reaching to get my stuff when I saw something in the weeds at 75 yards,” McKinney said. “Then the buck turned his head, and I saw his antlers on one side.”
McKinney knew he this was the deer he and his son had passed over for two years.
“He was very cautious, taking a step or two toward the bait pile, then he’d watch,” he said. “He was a really smart deer.”
When the buck reached 60 yards, the light was failing.
“I thought ‘I’m gonna have to take the shot with him facing me straight on,’” said McKinney, who looked down and cocked the muzzleloader’s hammer.
“I said, ‘Lord, if you’ll just let things work out the way they should,’ and when I looked in the scope, he’d turned broadside.”
McKinney put the crosshairs on the buck’s side and squeezed the trigger, igniting 100 grains of Pyrodex that sent a Powerbelt 245-grain bullet through the buck’s lungs.
“When the smoke cleared, I thought I saw him running to the left toward the woods,” McKinney said. “By a strange grace, I thought I heard a deer crash to my right, but I ruled that out because I was sure he went left.”
Minutes later, a pack of coyotes nearly scared McKinney out his wits as they began to bark and howl to his right.
“They went haywire,” said McKinney, who got out of his stand and walked into the field but couldn’t find where the deer had stood. With the world turning black, McKinney knew he’d need help to find the big buck, and he called his son, who was an hour away.
“I sat (in the stand) and waited for him,” McKinney said. “Then the rain really poured. When Brinton got there, I told him we’d never find the deer.”
While his son searched to the right of the field, McKinney went left.
“Brinton finally yelled he’d found a drop of blood in a log road, then he said he found so much blood the rain couldn’t wash it out,” he said.
As McKinney walked to his son, Brinton’s flashlight beam found the buck.
“He said, ‘Dad, I got a deer up here,’” McKinney said. “Then he said, ‘Whoa, we got a really good deer.’”
They loaded the buck on the ATV, eased down the hill to their vehicles and arrived at McKinney’s home by midnight When he later checked his trail-camera SIM card, he found 50 photos of the buck.
“They showed him eating apples,” he said. “He had an addiction for yellow apples.”
Be the first to comment