10-point trophy came during hunter’s respite from work
Holden Ayscue needed a break. Killing a 10-point trophy buck was just the kind of break he needed.
A 25-year-old resident of Wendell, N.C., he’d been working night and day for weeks, getting his business as a trucking company owner-operator off the ground.
He decided last week that he had to put down his tools and get away, into the woods, if for just a few hours.
Ayscue was rewarded last Thursday, Oct. 22, with a 10-point, 131 2/8-inch Wake County buck with an inside spread of 20 inches and a body on it that would have made an NFL linebacker sit up and take notice.
“I have just started my own business, and I hadn’t had time to hunt,” Ayscue said. “I hadn’t planned on shooting a big buck. But I needed to release some stress and clear my head. I was just so happy to be in the right place at the right time.”
The right place was an 18-foot ladder stand on a tree overlooking a 10-acre soybean field on the family farm. The right time was 7:10 a.m. And the right buck was one he’d seen before.
“Before the season came in, a friend of mine whose property backs up to our farm, he had trail-camera photos of this buck with a 4-pointer and a 6-pointer,” Ayscue said. “We were joking about what it would be like to kill that buck.
Smaller buck showed up first
“I was going to go Wednesday morning, but it had been real foggy. So I made a decision not to go then, but to go Thursday morning. It was still a little bit foggy, but it was higher up. I got in my stand about 6:30, a little later than usual. And about 7, I had the 4-pointer come out of the woods to my left and start to go across the beanfield. A tree limb between us gave me a little cover. And he got about 40 yards out and started eating.
“I watched him about 5 or 6 minutes. Then he looked behind himself, and it didn’t take long before he got out of there. I figured, ‘Something’s coming.’ I knew something was coming. But I thought first it might be a coyote.”
A minute or two later, a big deer stepped out behind the cover of the limb. It headed out into the bean field on the same path the 4-pointer had taken.
“He had his head down, and I didn’t see his rack. It sort of blended into the beans,” Ayscue said. “But his body was so big. There was no way it was a doe. I put the scope on him, saw 5 on one side. I said to myself that was the buck we were talking about.
Grunt call caught the attention of the 10-point trophy buck
“He came right up to where the 4-pointer had walked, and when I got him where I needed him, I grunted a couple of times with my mouth. He stopped and looked up. Before he could find me, I smoked him. He went right down.”
At 50 yards, the bullet from Ayscue’s .243 had been placed perfectly. It sliced through the buck’s boiler room and dropping it on the spot. Later, when caping the buck out for the taxidermist, he rolled up the skin over the deer’s shoulder. The bullet dropped out onto the ground, barely contained under the hide.
Ayscue got him on a set of scales that weighed to 200 pounds. And the buck bottomed the scale out immediately.
“We figured he weighed 215 or 220,” he said. “The rack is impressive. But the size of the deer’s body just amazed me. You look past the rack at his body because he’s so big.
“The crazy thing is, everybody said, ‘you’re lucky, very lucky.’ But it’s been 9 years since I shot my last big buck, an 8-pointer, and I haven’t shot any deer the last five years.”
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Bag-A-Buck contest
Congratulations to Ayscue, who is now entered in our Bag-A-Buck contest, making him eligible for a number of great prizes. This includes the grand prize — a 2-day, two-man hunt at Cherokee Run Hunting Lodge. Click here to view the Bag-A-Buck gallery or to enter the contest yourself.
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