Will huge Moore County non-typical become North Carolina’s state-record crossbow buck?
One little trail-camera photo may have changed North Carolina’s record book for whitetail bucks.
Chris Harden of Raeford, N.C., was at his truck, ready to leave his hunting property in Moore County on the afternoon of Oct. 9. He had been in his stand since 1:30 without seeing much, and thirsty and tired, he went back to his truck about 5 o’clock, drank a bottle of water and decided to look at a SIM card he had pulled earlier that day from a trail camera. He had his card reader in the truck, and when everything was plugged in, there appeared a photo of a huge, non-typical buck the day before, coming to his corn pile.
Harden collected his Parker crossbow and hustled back to his stand, climbed in, and as 7 o’clock approached, the buck in the photo appeared, possibly headed for the record books.
“I couldn’t believe it when I saw the buck walking to my stand, because I’d hunting this area for 15 years and hadn’t seen anything like his rack,” he said.
A few minutes later, he fired a Bone Collector carbon arrow tipped with a two-bladed, Swhacker broadhead through the buck’s vitals, and an hour later, he was standing over the trophy of a lifetime.
Harden’s buck carried a main-frame 5×5 rack with eight non-typical points totalling 306/8 inches. The 162-pound buck had main beams at 242/8 and 241/8 inches and tines measuring as long as 121/8 and 112/8 inches. It had 242/8 inches of abnormal points on the right beam, including a 102/8-inch protrusion from the base. The left beam added 6 abnormal inches
The deer green-scored as a nontypical at 200 inches gross and 1974/8 inches net. When it is officially scored after a 60-day required drying period, it could wind up as North Carolina’s biggest non-typical ever taken with a crossbow, breaking the record of 1957/8 — a Mecklenburg County buck taken in 2019 by Tracy McCorkle. An official score in excess of 195 will also put Harden’s trophy into the Boone & Crockett Club’s all-time record book.
Harden’s buck wasn’t a total surprise to him. A friend had told him a huge buck was in the area.
“Someone sent me a picture of the buck last year and said it was at the same area I hunted, but I didn’t believe him,” Harden said. “He also sent me a picture from 2020 of the same buck.
When Harden got back in his stand that fateful afternoon, he didn’t have to wait long. Two does walked up to his corn pile, followed by two bucks, a 7-pointer and an 8-pointer. which chased them away.
“The does started blowing and running around like something was after them. They acted scared. Then, I saw horns coming through the woods,” he said.
Harden shot the deer from less than 10 yards away
“I thank God his head was behind a tree,” Harden said. “I was going to let him step out, but I looked through my scope and saw his shoulder.”
The buck stood “7 or 8 yards” from his tree, and after Harden pulled the crossbow’s trigger at 6:58 p.m., the deer ran about 50 yards and stopped in its tracks.
Harden feared he’d missed, so he recocked and reloaded the crossbow. When the buck walked to a fence and stopped, he shot it again, through the neck. The buck ran, jumped another fence and disappeared.
Harden waited an hour, joined by friends Jimmy Jacobs and Tripp Cox, and the three got on the deer’s blood trail and found him.
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