Avery county hunter kills two bucks in two days

I hunt in Avery County, NC. Been hunting here and living here my whole life. Early season I had pictures of a good 8-pointer and a giant 9-pointer that I named Twin Towers (because of his long browtines).

Obviously I wanted Twin Towers worse, but the only time he’d ever show up was around midnight or throughout the night. Then he disappeared. Not one single picture of him for almost 3 weeks. I just knew he was dead somewhere because I had heard multiple gun shots every day that I hunted. I had tons of daylight pictures of the 8-pointer, so I decided to just go after him. I thought he’d be a pretty easy deer to kill since he was showing up constantly through the day.

Well I was wrong.

I put in every single second of spare time I had into hunting this deer. As long as I had a decent wind, I was hunting him. I was burning vacation time, canceling plans, just to get him. No matter how hard I studied him, he was always one step ahead of me. He had me mentally and physically exhausted. If I was in there, he wasn’t. If I wasn’t in there, he was. I’d sit all day long waiting for him to mess up. It never happened. He was a magician, so I named him Houdini.

On Dec. 7, I had a picture of a good 9-pointer at 9:30 and then Houdini came in behind him around 10:30. So that night I looked at my app on my phone and seen the next morning (Dec. 8) was going to be perfect. So I took some vacation time at work and went to try to get him. I sat there all morning and didn’t see a thing. I was just about to give up on the morning and I looked at the time on my phone and it said 10:30. I sat my phone down and looked up and there he was.

I shot him and dropped him where he stood. I got him gutted and hung up and had to go into work. After work I came home to finish him to get him ready for the taxidermist.

That night I was at home and my phone went off. I looked and it was a notification on my cell camera. It was a video of Twin Towers running by my camera chasing a doe. I didn’t expect him to be after a doe. I didn’t even expect him to be alive. But right then I decided I was going to test my luck and go hunting the next morning. I had to go to work at 8 a.m., so I only had a little over an hour of hunting light. I didn’t have any hopes but figured I’d try it anyway.

Sure enough around 7 a.m., I heard something running, I look over and it’s a doe. She takes off running and all I seen was the biggest set of antlers I’d ever seen in person, coming out of the laurel thicket. He took off after her. I couldn’t get him to stop. I finally just hollered “HEY” at him and he stopped perfectly broadside and I smoked him.

I shot the two deer less than 24 hours apart and within 20 feet of each other.

–CCHILL1

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