Being a native to New Hanover County, I have watched a significant amount of hunting land here be lost to development. This year I was fortunate enough to get hunting rights to a place that remains undeveloped. The property is a 20 acre cutdown and is surrounded by property owned by non-hunters. Usually I have my hunting holes prepared for season by mid July. This property I didn’t get rights to until mid September.
10 days ago this property was barely accessible due to the dense foliage. My hunting partner and I cut lanes, put a stand up, baited and placed cameras on some of the main deer trails we found. Numerous bucks were on camera during daylight hours however we didn’t see this specific buck. Yesterday we decided to go sit in the 2 man stand with our muzzleloaders and see what came out.
Early on we had a really nice 8pt come to the corn that was just as wide as this 9pter and had taller tines. He came in and was feeding at 60yds. Since the bucks usually came out in a group, my buddy wanted to wait and see if we could double up on bucks. I took a short video of it feeding and waited…..and as we all know, when you wait sometimes things happen. The buck got spooked by something and took off. The spot he exited was at the very end of a shooting lane about 120yds away. One hour later a 7pt came out of the same hole the 8pt exited and crossed the small lane. Behind it I could see a wide mature buck coming out that body-wise dwarfed the 7pt. I thought it was the wide 8pter. Since the 7pt didn’t walk down the trail towards the corn, I assumed this buck was probably going to follow the 7 and cross the trail too. This gap is probably 6 ft wide so there wasn’t much time to look at the buck. My buddy was using iron sights so 120 yards was a little far for him to try. The CVA Optima I was using has a scope so I cranked it to 9power and got the buck in the scope. He was staring directly at us so I could see how wide and mature he was. Knowing that I only had a split second, I started focusing on the shot and not the horns. After squeezing and the smoke cleared I could see the white belly laying down there and knew I dropped him. My buddy thought it was the same buck due to the wideness of the horns, I told him that when I was looking through the scope I only glanced at the horns since it was such a small gap and I had to make the shot decently quick but for some reason I felt like the tines were shorter than the original buck.
We had 45 minutes of shooting time left so we opted to stay in the stand and see if anything else came out. After dark we went to grab the
Buck and that’s when we realized it was a mature 9pter and not the 8 we watched feed in front of us one hour before. Very heavy bodied deer probably pushing a lil over 200 lb which is good-sized for this part of Southeast NC.
Thank you for reading.
Chris Sutton
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Bag A Buck Contest
Congratulations to Sutton, who is now in the running for our monthly prize of a free 1-year subscription to Carolina Sportsman Magazine, a Mini Maglite, an 18-ounce Yeti Rambler, a two-pack of Lowcountry Seasonings, as well as our Grand Prize, which includes a 3-year-subscription to Carolina Sportsman Magazine, a 2-day two-person hunt at Cherokee Run Hunting Lodge in Chesterfield, SC, and other prizes to be determined.
See all the bucks entered so far, and upload yours at carolinasportsman.com/bag-a-buck-2023, or email photo and detailed info to images@carolinasportsman.com.
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