Lost my hunting land of 10yrs this year due to a contract to sell the land. Took a walk around my house during some free time 2 days before this hunt to see if there was any good signs to try and hunt. I had been seeing several doe’s on my home security camera but had not seen any bucks at all. I found a couple trails, a couple small rubs, one old scrape and one semi- fresh scrape so I put a game camera up to see what showed up. The same night I got a trail camera pic of this deer and the fever kicked in. I hunted the next morning and saw a multitude of deer, mainly doe’s and a couple small bucks. I heard what sounded like 2 bucks sparing early, and saw several deer scatter, subsequently seeing a deer with a fairly nice main beam skirting through the woods headed away from my property. Afterwards, I witnessed numerous doe’s at different times running through the woods and knew somethings was stirring them up. After the movement and activity died down, I eased out for the morning. I got back and sat my hunting clothes out; near a small pile of brush I had been burning that was still smoking a little. I always heard that this type of scent was not alarming to deer due to it being in the air a good bit this time of year. I also sprayed down my clothes good with Scent Shield Xfactor fall Blend scent killer/cover scent. I waited until almost 3:15pm before gearing back up and heading back to the stand. It was pretty quiet until almost 4:30pm and I had almost lost hope of see much that afternoon, when I finally saw movement and eventually saw three doe’s. They browsed around for 20 mins or so before one of them started running the other two off a ways and then she would come right back. This happened a few times during which I produced a few short grunts with my grunt tube to see what, if anything, would respond. Eventually I caught a glimpse of a nice sized main beam coming through the woods towards the doe I had been watching. It was him.. He started browsing and eventually got his head and neck out from behind a patch of underbrush where I could really see the size of his rack. I was already setup with the crosshairs on him waiting on him to step out far enough to make a good and ethical shot. The wait lasted almost 8 minutes which felt like hours to me but was well worth it! I took the shot at around 5:25pm and he dropped on the spot..later finding out that it was a clean passthrough heart shot. After passing on several descent, and not harvesting any bucks over the past 5yrs, this one showed up just in time!
Hunter’s name: Jason Leaphart
LANCASTER South Carolina
South Carolina
11/12/24
8-point buck
