Big 10-point buck is a great early Christmas present
Rebecca Wise’s parents might have already bought her Christmas presents by Dec. 11, but she wound up getting a big present and setting up another that day. Wise, a 19-year-old student at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, was hunting in Beaufort County near her home in Bluffton when she dropped a 10-point buck with an unusual 2-point “shovel” on the base of its left antler. A few days later, she entered the buck in South Carolina Sportsman’s Bag-A-Buck contest, and her entry was drawn on Dec. 31 as winner of the monthly contest for December.
For winning the monthly contest, Wise will receive a gift certificate to the online Sportsman Store and a year’s subscription to South Carolina Sportsman magazine. Along with every other entrant, she will be eligible for the grand prize, which includes a Leupold optics package (rangefinder, binoculars, scope), a blackpowder gun from Nichols Store in Rock Hill and a 2-person, 1-day hunt from Cherokee Ridge Hunting Lodge in Chesterfield. It will be awarded at the Palmetto Sportsmen’s Classic in Columbia in March.
Wise had the buck in trail-camera photos, but she thought it was a big 8-pointer – the photos didn’t show the extra points. At 4:30 p.m. on Dec. 11, the buck walked into a field she was watching, and when the deer turned broadside shot at 70 yards, she squeezed off a shot from her .243.
“I thought I missed him,” she said. “Then, he walked about four steps away, and he just dropped. It was nerve-wracking.”
The buck weighed 140 pounds and was aged at 5½ years. Her father, William, later said he’d have the buck mounted for her as an extra Christmas present.
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