Big rifle too much for Williamsburg County buck

Hunting 1400-acre club near Kingstree

Battling a recent mosquito invasion in Williamsburg County, Brian Bailey dropped his first buck in two years on Oct. 25.

And like a mosquito has no chance against a fly-swatter, Bailey’s 132-inch, 8-point buck had little chance against the cannon he was shooting — a weapon capable of dropping African big game.

“I don’t play around with those small calibers. I want my deer to stay put as soon as I pull the trigger,” said Bailey, who hunts with a Remington 700 chambered for .35 Whelen and shooting custom 225-grain Barnes TSX bullets — all-copper rounds nicknamed “Death by Copper.” In a word, Bailey, a Pennsylvania native who lives in Williamsburg County, is rarely bothered by blood trails.

Bailey’s late-October success immediately followed a last-minute stand move before his afternoon sit. He and nine other hunters follow a strict 8-point, 14-inch minimum for bucks on their 1,400-acre club near Kingstree. Gary Strong, another hunter, had noticed some recent buck activity in the area and co-erced Bailey to set up in his brother-in-law’s
stand at the end of a road, even though the stand was just replaced and was missing the camouflage netting.

Bailey, a 35-year-old IT Specialist for  Martek Biosciences Corp.,is used to handling more complicated problems, and he slipped into his brother-in-law’s stand a few minutes early to attach the missing burlap. The stand was in a pine stand 30 yards wide that was flanked on each side by dense oak bottomlands. “Essentially, the stand was a funnel offering
deer easy passage to a corn pile,” Bailey said.

As the afternoon progressed and the sun dropped towards the horizon, a tall 3-pointer walked out of the bush and stepped up to feast on the corn,nearly 70 yards from Bailey’s stand. But after only feeding for a minutes, it ran across the pine ridge and back into heavy cover. “The buck looked up at me and seemed to spook at the new camouflage wrap around the stand,” he said.

Thirty minutes later, a doe appeared and began eating on the corn before becoming startled at something stirring just out of sight. Bailey spotted movement in his binoculars and quickly saw a heavy antler protruding into view. The buck began walking out of the brush with his head down and his back arched. Bailey quickly dropped his binoculars, aligned the crosshairs in his scope, and fired into the buck’s vital region before the deer could fully make it out of the woods. It was around 6:30 when he took the shot.

“As soon as I could tell it was a shooter buck, I knew I had to take a shot before the buck looked up at my stand and ran away. After the younger buck bolted away earlier, I knew I couldn’t take a chance,” he said. Bailey’s 132-inch buck boasted a 17 5/8-inch inside spread and had 10-inch G-2 tines. Watford’s Taxidermy aged Bailey’s buck to be more than 4½ years old.