Greensboro hunter drops huge Rockingham County buck

Rockingham County buck was 8 1/2-years-old

Pearce Ruffin said hello and good-bye to an old friend about two weeks ago, and he couldn’t have been happier.

The old friend was a 9-point, 154-inch whitetail buck that Ruffin, 18, had been following for six years. He got a chance to tag the Rockingham County buck on Nov. 17, and he didn’t waste it.

“I met him when he was 3 1/2-years-old. He was 130 inches, a nice deer, and I named him ‘Shrek’ because he was living in a nasty swamp,” said Ruffin, who lives in Greensboro and graduated from Page High School in 2019. “The next year, he blew up to about a 145-inch, main-frame 10-pointer. But I never saw him except in trail-cam photos. The next year, at 5 1/2, he was about 155 inches, and I missed him four times one morning. Four times he came across a bean field after a doe, but my scope had gotten knocked around in the gun safe, and I didn’t know it.”

After that encounter, Ruffin didn’t see the big buck until the next October, when he showed up on trail-cam photos as a 10-point, 165-inch trophy. In 2019, Ruffin started planting food plots and got hundreds of photos of the buck, which had a rack that was missing the last point on the right beam; just a nub showed.

Food plots kept the Rockingham County buck from straying

“This year, I really turned it up a notch. I planted 6 acres of beans, clover, rye grass, chicory, beets and bulbs,” he said. “We only have a hundred acres. And I figured when it got cold, I could get all the does in the area staying around for the food. That was the only way I might get him to slip up.”

Ruffin got the buck in trail-cam photos on Oct. 27, running does. The buck showed up in trail-cam photos on an oak flat that bordered the swamp and Ruffin’s huge food plot.

“When I checked the trail camera 10 days later, he showed up on a scrape,” he said. “On Nov. 17, I checked the trail camera that morning. And he had been active in that area, showing up three times on the edge of the acorn flat and the food plot. There must have been a lot of receptive does. I had 20 bucks in three days. So I knew I had to sit on the bean field.”

Rockingham County buck

That afternoon, Ruffin, who attends Guilford Technical Community College, climbed up in a tower stand he built last summer to watch the huge food plot. First off, a 110-inch buck crossed the field, then a 4-pointer 30 minutes later, followed by a 5-pointer and another 4-pointer.

“It was pretty obvious there were some receptive does around,” Ruffin said. “I figured, if I hunted that stand long enough, maybe he’d show up.”

At around 5 o’clock, a doe entered the field. In Ruffin’s mind, she was “acting squirrelly.”

Ruffin dropped the buck with one shot

“She was looking behind her, and at 185 yards, he popped out. I started freaking out, because my plan to keep the does around with all that food had worked,” he said.

Ruffin recognized Shrek immediately, drew down on him with his .270, and dropped the buck on the spot.

“He was sort of quartering toward me, and I shot him through the front shoulder,” he said.

Despite being 8 1/2-years-old, the buck still carried an impressive 5×4 main-frame rack with an inside spread of 19 6/8 inches, main beams at 25 5/8 and 21 7/8 inches, and four tines longer than 10 inches: 11 2/8, 11 2/8, 10 2/8 and 10 1/8. All that was missing from its peak years was the last point on its right beam.

“In his prime, he was probably 10 inches bigger. But he’s the biggest deer I’ve ever shot and the oldest deer I’ve ever hunted,” Ruffin said. “I knew I might have a chance during that 10-day period when he was actively chasing does. His neck was insanely big. But really, he had a pot belly earlier in the fall, and it was gone.

“I know, the year he was 5 1/2, we had a lot of EHD (epizootic hemorrhagic disease) around. His home range got smaller that year, and he looked puny at the end of the season.” 

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Bag-A-Buck

Congratulations to Ruffin, who is now entered in our Bag-A-Buck contest. This makes him eligible for a number of great prizes. That includes the grand prize, a two-day, two-man hunt at Cherokee Run Hunting Lodge. Click here to view the Bag-A-Buck gallery or to enter the contest yourself.

About Dan Kibler 887 Articles
Dan Kibler is the former managing editor of Carolina Sportsman Magazine. If every fish were a redfish and every big-game animal a wild turkey, he wouldn’t ever complain. His writing and photography skills have earned him numerous awards throughout his career.

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