Warren County couple each kill trophy bucks

Warren County

Patience led to trophy bucks for Preston and Laura Richardson

Preston and Laura Richardson of Manson, N.C. discovered patience can have concrete results as they each killed a trophy buck within days of each other in Warren County during early November.

“I had trail-camera pictures of my buck the last four years, and finally decided to take him Nov. 6,” said Preston Richardson.

From 2017-2019, the Warren County buck’s headgear included 10 points with a split G2.

“But this year, (its rack) blew up to be a 6×6 with all this trash (abnormal points),” he said. “The rack had 17 scoreable points and green-gross scores approximately 157 inches.”

Two days later his wife Laura used a Tikka .270 Short Mag to drop a buck with a nearly-perfect 5×5 rack that totaled 146 Boone-and-Crockett inches.

“My wife killed hers Sunday evening at a farm where we had three years of trail-cam pictures,” Richardson said. “It’s always been a 10. But this year it put on an extra point. But it’d been nocturnal since October.”

Warren County
Preston Richardson shot a 17-point Warren County trophy buck on Nov. 6, 2020.

On Nov. 6 at 6 a.m., Preston Richardson walked to a tree fitted with an Ameristep ladder stand.

“I’d set it up at some big woods on the side of an oak ridge joining a bedding area,” he said.

At 7 a.m., the buck walked up the hill, headed to its bedding area.

Richardson was 30 feet off the ground and holding a .308 Ruger with a Nikon BDC scope. The area was near Kerr Lake, he said, with lots of big scrapes and rubs, classic big buck signs.

“When I shot, (the deer) dropped right in his tracks,” he said.

The buck carried a massive rack

The buck weighed 190 pounds and carried a rack with 9-inch circumference bases.

“It was huge and held its mass. The ends of the main beams were 5 inches,” he said. “It looked like an Iowa or Illinois deer.”

Laura Richardson became interested in deer hunting a season before they were married six years ago.

“Three years ago, she won Carolina Sportsman Magazine’s Bag-A-Buck contest and in 2019 she won the Dixie Deer Classic’s Virginia Women’s top buck award with a 133-inch 8-pointer,” he said.

“We both let smaller bucks walk. And she’s learned so much about deer hunting, she could be a guide.”

Laura knew enough to use a Primos Buck Roar grunt call to stop her 10-pointer.

Around 5 p.m., Nov. 8, three does came near her stand. But she saw another deer through the woods.

Warren County

“She blew the grunt call and the buck walked straight toward her but stopped. So she blew the grunt again,” Richardson said. “It bristled up and started ramming a tree, then walked off. She used her mouth to make a sound to stop it and fired her Tikka .270 Short Mag.”

The deer ran into a swampy cutover. So the next day, one of Jeff Fuller’s trained “Low to the Ground Retrievers,” (a dachshund) found the buck 270 yards from where it was shot.

Her buck’s rack had identical 25-inch-long main beams, 5-inch bases, 7-inch long brow tines, G2s of 9 inches, and G3s of 9 1/2 inches.

Pendergrass Taxidermy of Henderson is preparing both mounts.

About Craig Holt 1382 Articles
Craig Holt of Snow Camp has been an outdoor writer for almost 40 years, working for several newspapers, then serving as managing editor for North Carolina Sportsman and South Carolina Sportsman before becoming a full-time free-lancer in 2009.

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