Heavy buck with double split brow tines green scores 157 inches Boone & Crockett.
While his son was on a hunting trip out west to kill a big buck, Charles Rayfield of Chesterfield bagged a trophy here at home. The 215-pound buck the elder Rayfield downed on Nov. 5 had a 12-point rack with a 20-inch inside spread and 24-inch main beams.
Rayfield has two 130-class bucks already in South Carolina’s record book, but this deer will best them both. His latest green scored at 157 and change Boone & Crockett – one in a series of big trophies taken from Chesterfield County in the past three weeks.
Rayfield had seen the buck a couple of times this season but never had a clear shot.
After not seeing it for some time, Rayfield placed a few trail cameras around his favorite hunting spot. One was set up on a tree line facing a soybean field, and that camera caught the buck – which had signature split brow tines – several times, but never during legal shooting hours.
The photos also showed that Rayfield had missed seeing the buck by just 15 minutes one morning.
“I knew with the rut that buck would slip up and show himself during daylight hours,” Rayfield said. “I put out some Code Blue Doe in Heat scent real early on Nov. 5. My brother called me to pick him up to go hunting, and I told him I was already in the stand.
“Fifteen minutes after first light, a deer walked out to check that Code Blue. I knew it was him.”
From his ladder stand 15 feet up in a white oak tree, Rayfield watched the buck for a minute through his binoculars, and then raised his rifle.
“I wasn’t going to waste any time with this deer,” the hunter said. “I knew he might disappear in a split second.
“I put the crosshairs right behind his shoulder and pulled the trigger.”
Rayfield said he knew right away the hand-loaded 138-grain bullet from his Weatherby 7mm Magnum had hit home.
“I heard the thump, and the deer took off,” Rayfield said. “I sat about an hour, (and) then climbed down out the stand. I picked up the blood trail right away.”
About 50 yards from where the deer had been standing, the blood trail petered out. Rayfield was about to backtrack when he saw the deer 20 feet away off the trail.
“I was surprised because that deer always showed up on the cameras outside of legal shooting hours, but I knew that doe scent would give me a chance,” said Rayfield, who called a friend to help him drag the deer out of the woods and load onto his truck.
Rayfield called his son, Heath Rayfield, to tell him about the deer was on the way to Thompson Creek Deer Processing, which his son operates.
“I told my son to stay out west and hunt them big deer,” Rayfield said. “I told him I got everything under control back here.”
See more bucks killed this season – and add photos of your own – in the South Carolina Sportsman Bag-a-Buck Contest!
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