Drop-tine buck wins November Bag-A-Buck contest
Bradley Blackmon of Catawba, N.C., got a second chance at a big buck last month, and it turned out just fine.
Blackmon had a trail-camera photo of a huge Catawba County buck on Oct. 23, and he hunted the buck hard after that. On Nov. 6 and 7, he hunted from one box blind, then moved to another on the morning of Nov. 8.
“From the stand I hunted that morning, I could see the other stand I had hunted the previous two mornings. It was about 300 yards away,” Blackmon said. “The buck came out that morning, right under the stand I’d hunted the previous morning.”
Third stand is the charm
That afternoon, Blackmon was back, this time in a third stand. He climbed in at 1:30, and within five minutes, he had the buck, an 11-pointer, on the ground.
Three weeks later, he won Carolina Sportsman’s Bag-A-Buck contest for November. Blackmon won a free, one-year subscription to the magazine and a $25 gift certificate to the Sportsman’s online Outdoor Store.
All subscribers to Carolina Sportsman are eligible to enter Bag-A-Buck, which is divided into four monthly contests (August-September, October, November and December). The grand prize winner, to be announced in March from all entries, will receive a prize-package including a two-day deer/hog combination hunt for two people at Cherokee Run Hunting Lodge in Chesterfield County, S.C., a $50 gift certificate to the online Sportsman’s Store and a free, three-year subscription to Carolina Sportsman.
Blackmon busted the buck at 67 yards with a .50-caliber Thompson blackpowder rifle. The slug broke the buck’s left shoulder and dropped him on the spot.
Blackmon’s buck carried an extremely wide, 5×5 main-frame rack with a long drop tine on the left beam. Blackmon said the buck’s inside spread is 22 inches, and rough-scoring puts it around 150 inches. He plans to have the buck scored officially at the Dixie Deer Classic in March in Raleigh.
