Greg Lawrimore keeps a pack of 18 dogs in a pen behind his house near Ridgeville in Dorchester County, and he’s a long-time member of the Eureka Hunt Club, a dog-driving club.
So when he killed a huge Lowcountry buck on Oct. 13, it figured that maybe a dog was close by? How ’bout 175 yards?
That’s how far Lawrimore was set up — in a tree stand — behind his dog pens in a deer stand when he killed the trophy 9-point buck that scores in the low 140s, with a 22-inch outside spread.
Lawrimore occasionally hunts on some property behind his house. He uses a BuckShot II climbing stand and keeps a corn pile near the tree he likes to climb. The first week of October, he found a good scrape line close to his stand. He knew it was active, because he twice pushed some leaves into one of the scrapes, and when he checked it again, a buck had cleaned it out.
Taught by his father not to leave any human scent near a scrape, Lawrimore was careful when he checked things out.
“I used a stick to push the leaves into the scrape, careful not to touch anything, and then I took the stick out of the woods with me,” he said. “I had seen a track that made me think a good buck was in the area, but I had no idea he was this nice.
“I don’t use a scouting camera, and I never will because for me it spoils the excitement of the hunt. I give thanks for the heartfelt adrenaline rush I get when I see a buck like this, and I don’t really want to have any knowledge about what buck I am looking for.”
Lawrimore had dribbled some Buck Stop 200 doe-in-heat lure on some of the leaves on a nearby tree, and that played a role in the kill. So did the wind.
“The north wind that was blowing worked perfect for the hunt,” he said.
Several does were eating at the corn pile when the buck showed up at about 6:15 p.m. Lawrimore had a little early warning, because just before the buck appeared, several squirrel began barking and crows began calling.
The buck showed up and began to rub the trunk of the lure-enhanced tree, and Lawrimore shot him about a minute after he arrived.
“When I saw this buck, I could tell he was an acorn buck or swamp buck because he was very dark in coloration, and his neck was swollen up, too,” said Lawrimore, who was using a Remington Model 700 in 7mm Magnum topped with a Leupold Vari-XII scope.
An avid hunter for the past 25 years, Lawrimore last took a big buck on Thanksgiving day of 1997 — proving that trophy bucks don’t come along just every day.
The “dog pen buck,” which weighed 158 pounds, was scored by taxidermist Kenneth Cordray at Cordray’s Venison Processing in Ravenel.
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