Hunter’s trail cam sent photo of buck 30 minutes earlier
Rodney McDaris of Weaverville, N.C. killed a 12-point giant of a Buncombe County buck on Nov. 26 around 5 p.m. Rough estimates put the deer’s rack in the 170-inch range.
McDaris had been observing the deer though trail cam photos since August, but those were all nighttime photos until the last two weeks of November. He uses Covert Scouting Cameras, which send photos to his cell phone throughout the day. This allows him to observe the deer population without scattering human scent throughout the woods while pulling memory cards from the cameras.
McDaris was hunting on private land owned by a friend. He said the area has a few decent bucks on it, but that this particular deer really stood out from the rest.
Trophy Buncombe County buck was big in the rack and in the body
“I started getting photos of this deer with my trail cameras back in August. The deer was coming to mineral licks, mostly during the night and early morning when it was still dark. Then I started getting daytime pictures around the second week of November. So I pretty much moved in with him and hunted several days from daylight until dark,” said McDaris.
On the second day of gun season, McDaris got in his climbing stand around 3 p.m. Around 4:30 p.m., he got an alert on his cell phone from one of his trail cameras. It was a photo of his target buck about 100 yards away. McDaris got ready. And when the buck showed up at 5 p.m., McDaris shot it with his .243 at about 50 yards. It fell just a few yards from where he shot it.
As impressive as the deer’s rack is, that’s not the only thing that caught the attention of McDaris. Especially after he killed it and had a friend helping him drag the beast out.
“We didn’t get an official weight on it, but we estimate he weighed about 250 pounds. It was quite a chore getting him out of there,” he said.
Did you read about the solid white 7-point buck killed in Wake County last month? Click here to see that story.
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