Will Fussy skipped school on Nov. 25 because he had only one class, and the hunting gods punished him. Walking into his stand, a big non-typical buck presented him with a 65-yard shot, which he promptly missed.
Then, they apparently smiled on him. About 45 minutes after the big miss, they gave him another chance. This time, he didn’t miss.
Fussy, an 18-year-old freshman at Hampden-Sydney College from Waxhaw, came home the Monday before Thanksgiving, even though he had a class scheduled the next day.
“I wasn’t staying for one class,” he said. “I wasn’t planning on hunting that morning, but I got up anyway and went out.”
Walking a trail into his stand, he “heard some crunching in the leaves.
“Then, he came running and stood 10 yards in front of me,” said Fussy, who described the deer as looking “like he had hockey sticks coming out of his head.
“I had no shell in my gun, and I slid my gun off my shoulder to put a shell in, but he turned and ran down the trail 65 or 70 yards. I pulled the gun up and shot, and I know I missed.”
The buck turned and ran off the property Fussy was hunting, into a cut bean field, where he was joined moments later by an 8-point buck.
“I went ahead and climbed into my stand, hoping he’d come back, and the 8-pointer came back — he walked across from me at 40 yards — and the bigger one started to follow him, but he turned and ran across the corner of the field into the woods.
“I was thinking, ‘Oh, no, he’s gone.’ I was mad. I texted my mom and told her what happened. Then, 25 minutes later, I heard crunching again, and I looked up and he’s 45 yards in front of me. I couldn’t believe it.”
Fussy dropped the buck on the spot with his .30-06, then went up to get a good look at him in person, having seen him only on two trail-camera photos, taken from different cameras, on Nov. 9.
The buck has a main-frame 5×5 rack with a 19-inch inside spread, but from there on, it’s hard to describe. The first and second long tines on the buck’s right beam are forked, there’s a form on one tine on the left beam, and there are places on the beams that measure 6 inches in circumference.
“We counted 17 points, but really, it probably should be 15 (scorable),” Fussy said. “And there are a couple of places where it looks like he’s broken off a kicker or two.”
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