Northern Piedmont Trophies

Michael Clifton of Reidsville tagged N.C.’s highest-scoring buck last November in his home county, Rockingham, while hunting at a small tract of private land.

Granville and Rockingham surrender North Carolina’s top bucks.

Michael Clifton and Duane Boston hadn’t met prior to last March’s Dixie Deer Classic at the N.C. State Fairgrounds in Raleigh.

Before last year, they didn’t have much in common. Clifton lives in Rockingham County and works in Greensboro for Dow Corning, while Boston lives farther west in Catawba County, clinging to a job in western N.C.’s troubled furniture industry.

But at Raleigh last spring, they discovered, like 275,000 other Tar Heels, they shared an interest — deer hunting in the trophy belt of N.C.’s northern piedmont counties. And that bond eventually put them on the awards stand at the Classic with the two best bucks in their respective categories.

And both trophies were taken during November 2006, when the “rut” (mating season) for whitetails was at its peak.

Clifton, who lives in Reidsville, had fewer miles to go in order to draw a bead on his buck, which measured 167 5/8 non-typical Boone-and-Crockett inches and was the highest-scoring N.C. deer displayed at the 2007 Classic.

Rockingham County has been a hot spot for trophy bucks in recent years, especially the last decade of the 20th century. It’s part of the northern piedmont tier of counties known as N.C.’s “trophy belt.” With several drainages (prominently the Dan and Mayo rivers) and proximity to southern Virginia, which is a known producer of quality bucks, Rockingham County usually has down a dozen or more 140s-class deer — and often better racks — each year.

“I’ve killed some 130-class deer in the past (in Rockingham County),” said the 46-year-old Clifton. “Three years before (2003), I killed a nine-pointer that grossed 138 inches.

“But I’d never killed a non-typical buck; I’d never even seen one around here.”

Like many hard-core hunters who know their region is saturated with trophy potential, through the years Clifton has garnered permission to hunt at many small land tracts.

“I have some leased land and some that’s private,” he said. “The place I got this deer was a small tract of private land where only a few people are allowed to hunt.”

During the 2005 season and preseason scouting last summer, he’d come across indications this area might hold some good bucks.

“I knew it had some good signs (of bucks),” he said. “In fact, it was a better-than-average place; it had some really good rubs. I set up my stand not far from one of those good rubs. (The buck) had twisted off pine limbs that were rib-cage high.

“I had a feeling a pretty good deer lived there because of the pine limbs twisted off that high from the ground.”

It also helped that the landowner had told Clifton he’d seen a “pretty good” buck.

“He showed me a shed he’d picked up back there several years ago, and it was big,” he said.

Clifton’s landowner has a small orchard grass field he mows once or twice each summer, which helps Clifton and his friends reach the field more easily than if the farmer let it become overgrown.

“It’s got just a few sparse pines in the field,” Clifton said.

One side of the field is adjoined by oak woods and that’s where Clifton chose to put his Climax lock-on tree stand in a poplar about 50 yards into the oaks from the field’s edge. A couple of deer trails circled the field and intersected a path leading to it, the deepest trail the likely route used by bucks that checked the field by scent for does during the rut. From his vantage point, Clifton said he could watch for deer moving in the woods or look toward the field to see any whitetails at its edge. He also had a good view of the middle of the field.

“This is a place I only hunt a few times each year because the wind has to be just right,” he said. “It’s got a lot of cover on the north side. This day there was a crosswind blowing from the northwest down into the field; it was a perfect setup.”

Clifton said he got into his stand a little later than usual that day, Nov. 18, the Saturday before Thanksgiving, but conditions were perfect — overcast and cool — to put deer on the move.

“It was about 3:45 p.m. when I got into the stand,” he said.

After a few minutes, two small bucks walked up the lower trail, checking the air currents for hot does that might be at the field. With Clifton 30-feet high in the poplar, they never knew they were being scanned.

“A big four-pointer and a three-pointer started running a doe all around me, then they went out of sight,” he said. “About 15 minutes later, I watched a doe sprint across the field. She was running wide open, so I knew something was after her. She turned and came into the woods and a minute or so later, here came the three-point buck. They went around me two or three times, then she went down to the creek. About five or 10 minutes later, the four-pointer, with a 16-inch-wide rack, was at the trail, checking the field. He never went to the field but also walked down below me out of sight.”

About about 4:20 p.m., Clifton spotted a lone doe in the orchard grass field.

“She had worked her way into the field,” he said. “She was about 50 or 60 yards out into the field when she threw up her head. She looked behind her, munching a foot-long piece of grass, a sight I’ll never forget.”

The doe’s head toss and look backward told Clifton another deer, probably a buck, had walked into her range of sight. Then the doe walked into the woods and meandered past Clifton’s stand, also moving into the thick overgrown bottom behind him, out of his vision.

After about 10 minutes of looking at the pine-strewn field with his binoculars, Clifton caught sight of more movement out there — but after he dropped his field glasses.

“I could see a good-size body on this deer,” he said, “then I couldn’t see him, then he stepped into an opening. Oh, man, I could see he was a big non-typical. He was trailing the last doe; he stuck his head on the ground and started down the edge of the field.

“I knew I had only a couple of places (clear enough) to shoot, so I got ready.”

Clifton said the buck was moving so quickly he couldn’t get his rifle up and be ready to shoot at the first opening, but he grunted with his mouth when the buck entered the second small clearing.

“I put the (crosshairs of his Kimber Montana 8400, a .30-06 with a 3.5×10 Leupold scope) rifle behind his shoulder,” Clifton said.

During the lead-up to shooting the deer — with bucks chasing does all over the place — the hunter said he was calm. But once he shot, things changed.

“I wasn’t nervous before, but then I got nervous and said, ‘Lord, please help me get down out of this tree,’ ” said Clifton, whose said his legs turned to jelly.

Once he descended and walked the approximately 50 yards to where the deer had been before it bolted back across the field, the hunter was stunned to not find any signs of a hit. There was no blood trail or spots of blood.

“I just started walking in the direction (the deer) went,” Clifton said. “He was headed toward a hedgerow. Once I got there I could see his back end, piled up with his head toward the base of a pine tree. When I pulled him out, the only thing I could say was ‘wow.’ ”

Clifton believes the deer was mature deer, even though it only weighed 165 pounds, which made its explosive-looking 21-point rack, with multiple points extending in all directions, look even larger.

The left beam had 11 points, 10 at least 1-inch long, and the right beam had 10 points, all scoreable. Not only that, a drop tine had been broken off of each side of the rack, which would have made it score even greater than its 174-inches gross total. The rack has 27 inches of abnormal points.

Eric Knowles of Broken Arrow Taxidermy prepared the taxidermy mount after removing the buck’s cape that evening.

About Craig Holt 1382 Articles
Craig Holt of Snow Camp has been an outdoor writer for almost 40 years, working for several newspapers, then serving as managing editor for North Carolina Sportsman and South Carolina Sportsman before becoming a full-time free-lancer in 2009.

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