Amazing non-typical buck falls in Surry County

Deer grew unique antlers featuring 25 scoreable points.

As in most endeavors, sometimes the most important aspect of hunting is just “being there” to take advantage of presented opportunities. That’s just a fancy way of saying you can’t get lucky if you ain’t in the ball game.

Josh Simpson of Pilot Mountain in Surry County isn’t about to argue that point. He knows the importance of being in the woods — even better, almost getting to the woods — in bagging a trophy white-tailed buck like the 25-pointer he bagged Nov. 10.

“I didn’t do much of anything special,” Simpson said. “I was just trying to go to my stand early because it was during the rut, the moon was full and I felt like deer would be moving (in the afternoon).”

That one piece of knowledge — knowing deer would move in the afternoon during a full moon period — was probably the key that put the hunter in the right place at the right time to bag one of 2011’s great bucks.

Simpson, an employee of Petroleum Transport of Pilot Mountain, was headed to a farm he’d hunted for years on the first Thursday of the northwestern zone muzzleloader season.

“I have a long road I have to walk down to get to my stand, and I had parked (his truck) at about 2 p.m.,” he said. “I’ve hunted this land all my life. It’s in the Ararat River valley, and everybody knows a river valley is a good place to find deer.”

Simpson said he’d found a lot of scrapes and rubs made by bucks during the pre-rut period and during the rut.

“I knew something was going on with a big buck, but I wasn’t expecting anything like this deer,” he said.

Simpson said he had a trail camera but hadn’t set it up this year.

“But nobody I know of around there had ever seen this deer,” he said. “At least there wasn’t any talk by anybody they’d seen a deer with a rack like this one.”

Once he parked his truck and grabbed his camouflaged Thompson Center Omega in-line muzzleloader, which was loaded with a 240-grain saboted bullet and three 50-grain pellets of Pyrodex, he started to walk down the road toward the woods where he’d placed his stand.

“I hadn’t walked but a few steps, and out jumped this buck from one side of the road,” Simpson said. “He jumped up on the bank on the opposite side, but then he just stood there, looking at me, like deer sometimes do.

“I don’t think he knew what I was, and I don’t think he was runnin’ from me. He might have been chasin’ a doe; I just don’t know.”

Not one to belabor his good fortune, Simpson said he took only a moment to make the decision to shoot.

“I only knew he was a shooter,” he said. “I didn’t have time to study his rack.”

He threw up his rifle, peered through the scope and put the crosshairs behind the buck’s right shoulder and pulled the trigger.

“(The shot) knocked him down,” Simpson said. “I ran up there, and that’s when I got a look at his antlers.”

He was astounded by what he saw — a rack with tines going in every direction.

“I couldn’t move when I saw his rack,” Simpson said. “I was in la-la land, amazed.”

Simpson had to back his truck up to a small hill so he could load the buck into the bed. Then he called his brother Dale and told him to come to a local farm-supply store where Simpson took the buck.

“I’m a big joker and always told everyone (in his family) when they asked when I went hunting if I got a deer that, ‘Yeah, I killed a 12-pointer,’ so I called my wife — and she didn’t believe me,” Simpson said. “Then I called my dad and my brother and they said, ‘You’re full of it.’

“Nobody really believed me until they saw this deer.”

Simpson took the buck to Mike Johnson’s archery and fishing shop on U.S. 268. Johnson counted 28 tines and abnormal points, but said only 25 were scoreable points. These points include double drop tines and a split double drop on the right main beam.

“But I don’t know the score of this rack,” Simpson said. “Nobody up here knows how to start scoring a rack like this.”

Joey Thompson of King, a North Carolina Bowhunters Association member and official scorer, is expected to put a tape on the deer’s rack before the Dixie Deer Classic in March.

See other bucks killed this season – and post photos of your own kills – in the North Carolina Sportsman Bag-a-Buck Contest!