Skill + Luck = Bucks

N.C.’s best 2007 bow deer offered shots to hunters on consecutive days.

The two North Carolina archery hunters who downed the top bow-killed bucks of 2007 had something in common — neither had seen their bucks previously; they hunted food sources at almost the same time in the middle of September; and they admit they were lucky.

Frank “Johnathan” Cash of Hurdle Mills, a small farming community in southern Person County, was hunting September 14 near a soybean field, while young Jacob Burgess of Conway was in a stand September 15 near a Northampton County peanut field.

Cash’s buck, which sported a typical 6×6 rack and two 1-inch spurs below the brow tines on each main frame, totaled 157 6/8 Boone-and-Crockett inches. The deer’s rack had more inches of antler than all but two N.C. deer entered at the 2008 Dixie Deer Classic.

Burgess’ trophy, at 136 1/8 B&C inches, although not the highest-scoring non-typical ever entered at the Classic, had 11 non-typical points and heavy, thick tines. It also was the first buck Burgess had dropped with a bow and arrow.

Cash was lucky to get a chance at his buck which, by all rights, should have died sometime earlier. Burgess’ trophy almost got away as he and two friends had to search for hours, finally finding the non-typical at 11 p.m.

Cash, 46, and a foreman for Glosson Construction of Durham, was hunting after he’d finished work.

“It was a misty-rain day,” he said.

Cash said he wasn’t hunting this particular buck. In fact, he’d never seen the deer in the past.

“But I’ve got four trail cams set out, and I’d seen several nice deer (on those photos),” he said.

Cash had a ladder stand set up near a deer trail that led to a soybean field that deer often visited. He’d taken up bow hunting only three years earlier and began when his employer, Daniel Glosson, gave him a used bow after Glosson’s son stopped hunting.

“I was set up near the trail cam,” said Cash, who was dressed in full camo hunting clothes and employed a cover scent to keep his human odor masked from the sharp noses of the local deer herd. “I had put up one of those little umbrellas above the stand so I could hunt and be dry.”

The rain had cancelled work that day, so Cash climbed into his stand about 3:30 p.m.

“I saw a few deer down there (in the field) while the mist was falling,” he said.

At about 4 p.m., Cash heard a noise behind him in the woods.

“I turned to my head to my left, and there he stood,” the hunter said. “I was surprised; I wasn’t expecting to see a buck like that. There were some limbs from another tree that blocked my view a little, but he couldn’t have come out at a better place. The deer was on my left, and I’m a right-handed shooter.”

The heavy-racked whitetail, unaware it was being watched, walked a little closer, never knowing Cash, sitting 15 feet off the ground, was preparing to shoot.

“I finally got my bow drawed back, shot him and he ran off,” Cash said.

Cash’s Carbon Express arrow, with a Muzzy broadhead flung by a PSE compound bow set at 65 pounds, hit behind the buck’s right shoulder and passed through its body.

“I hit him right where I was aiming,” Cash said, “and when he ran off, I saw him fall.”

After waiting 15 minutes, Cash said he almost jumped out of the stand then walked and ran to the buck.

“I still was excited about seeing a good-size deer,” he said.

Cash then ran to his nearby home and excitedly told his eldest son, Adam, to get the truck and drive to the soybean field.

“Adam said, ‘You told me you’d got a deer, but you didn’t tell me he looked like this,’ ” Cash said.

Cash estimated the buck weighed between 220 and 230 pounds.

“My guess is someone spooked him off a nearby farm because I’d never seen him or had a picture of him,” said Cash, who now has killed five deer with his bow and many with guns. He best previous buck was an eight-pointer.

When Cash skinned the buck, he also discovered he was lucky to have an opportunity to shoot at this deer. Someone else had gotten first dibs.

“When I was going down his back with my knife, I hit something metal,” Cash said.

He removed an intact broadhead from the buck’s backstrap, an arrowhead someone apparently had shot from ground level.

“The meat was completely healed up,” he said.

Cash asked people in his neighborhood, but no one would admit taking a shot at the buck in the past.

“It don’t matter because whoever shot him ain’t getting him now,” Cash said with a laugh.

***

The top non-typical buck of 2007 also happened to walk near a novice bow hunter who also is a rising junior at Northampton East High School.

“We (his family) farm about 2,200 acres of corn, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, cotton, watermelons and pumpkins,” said 17-year-old Jacob Burgess, who lives and works at Burgess Farms near Conway.

Burgess had put a tree stand in a hardwood tree about 50 yards from a peanut field the morning of September 15.

“I was (previously) back there (at the field) working when I saw some deer, but I’d never seen this particular buck,” he said. “After I shot him, I saw where he’d made a scrape line in the woods.”

Burgess, after hanging the stand that morning, returned that afternoon.

“I got into the stand about 5:30 p.m., before the time changed, and there was plenty of light,” he said.

He saw for 1 hour, 15 minutes without seeing anything except mosquitoes.

“I was camouflaged, but I wasn’t wearing a face mask,” he said. “If it’d been a normal year, I’d have had mosquitoes all over me.”

During 2007 North Carolina suffered a severe drought and water was lacking at most outside areas.

“I put the stand up in a swamp, actually in a creek bed that was dry,” he said. “I put the stand about 15 feet up in a cypress tree that was really hard to climb but was the only tree available. Right now (July 2008) that place is underwater, but back then it had green grass growing in those woods, which were pretty open.

“I could see the deer walking toward me from 100 yards away.”

Burgess readied his PSE compound bow, set at 68 pounds draw weight. He had nocked a Redhead arrow with a three-bladed Thunderhead 100-grain broadhead.

“(The buck) was coming toward that peanut field,” he said. “The woods hadn’t been logged out or anything.

“I had to wait for him to come to me.”

Burgess had taken other bucks by using a rifle, but he’d never shot at a buck with his bow and arrow.

“Last year was my first year hunting with a bow,” he said.

Being a novice archery hunter, Burgess suddenly got a case of buck fever when the big deer walked within bow range.

“He was coming straight to me, then he turned and went around me,” the youth said. “I thought he wasn’t going to come near me again.

“Then he turned and stopped to eat some leaves off a tree.”

When the buck turned its head, Burgess tried to draw back his bow string but found his arms suddenly seemed to lose their strength. He tried a second, then a third time before he could pull back the bow string and arrow.

“By this time, he raised up his head and was shaking it,” the young hunter said. “I was afraid he might get wind of me and run.”

Burgess, aiming behind the deer’s front shoulder, couldn’t hold steady his front arm, and the arrow hit too far back.

“I was shakin’,” the youngster said. “All I could see was his left side and all those real tall (antler) points.”

When the arrow reached the deer, the animal spun and ran away, seemingly uninjured.

“I figured I’d missed him,” Burgess said.

He waited 15 minutes, then came down from his stand and started looking for signs of a hit.

“I kept looking and looking and finally found some blood,” he said.

His cousin, Adam Burgess, also was bow hunting and joined Jacob in the search for the deer, but to no avail. Darkness soon fell across the landscape, and Burgess and his cousin were frantic.

The two cousins rambled across swamp terrain for 45 minutes and actually got lost in the woods. Then they found their way out and called a local man who has experience in tracking wounded deer.

“We called Harvey Byrd Jr., who is a big-time hunter and lives nearby,” Jacob Burgess said.

When Byrd arrived, he helped track the buck some 400 yards.

“He’d run, then stop and make a big pool of blood, then he’d run and the blood sign would go away,” Burgess said.

Finally, Byrd found the buck piled up in a cutover.

Burgess’ best previous buck was an eight-pointer with a 16 1/2-inches inside spread.

“I was really surprised to win the Dixie Deer non-typical category with him,” Burgess said.

“I’m just glad Harvey Byrd came help us find him.”