Freak buck killed in Chesterfield County

Monster deer tentatively scores 160, might be unscorable.

Michael Lisenby can rest easy knowing that, while there may be some whitetail bucks killed this year in South Carolina that are bigger than the one he killed in his home county of Chesterfield last Saturday (Oct 22), there will be none that will be able to match it.

That’s because it’s likely that no one will be able to compare notes and measurements with Lisenby and claim that their buck was bigger – because there probably isn’t a way to accurately measure the deer he killed just after 6 p.m. during that hunt.

“I don’t see how it can be scored,” said Heath Rayfiled of Thompson Creek Deer Processing. “I don’t know how you can pick out a main beam.”

That’s a common statement from people who have looked at Lisenby’s buck, which can best be described as a “freak.”

Its right main beam is relatively normal, with one 10-inch tine and three others, one of them split.

It’s the left beam that’s a piece of work. Well, not exactly the left beam – more like the left “bush” or “tree.”

Growing out of the base on the left side of the buck’s head is some kind of growth – one that features 13 different points between four and 10 inches long. There’s sort of a drop tine that splits in half, one long piece of antler that splits twice like a mule deer with an extra sticker point, and then another offshoot with four more points.

A tape measure was put on the buck, and according to Rayfield, the rack has approximately 160 inches of horn – you just can’t tell what goes where and why.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do after killing this one,” said Lisenby, a 35-year-old power-plant employee. “I’ve seen and killed a lot of nice bucks, but it’s hard to describe this one.”

Lisenby almost didn’t hunt that afternoon. He was ready to head home, but he decided to head to his hunting grounds and put out a bag of corn.

Once he got there, something made him leave the corn in his truck, put on his hunting clothes and slip into his stand at 6 o’clock.

“I’ve got a buddy (ladder) stand on a tree looking over this field,” Lisenby said. “This year, the field was planted in watermelons, and the farmer didn’t make anything on it. The deer ate all the way down to the stalk.”

Lisenby killed an 8-pointer with a spread a shade over 19 inches from the same stand in 2010, but the buck was on the other end of the field. This time, he’d found a series of eight scrapes under the overhanging branches of oak trees that line a 35-yard segment of the field edge.

Lisenby had been in his stand long enough to get settled down and start scanning the field edge when he saw the buck, standing under the overhanging branches.

“He was standing right in the middle of the scrapes,” he said. “He had come out of the woods, and he was under the canopy.

“I knew he was the one that had made all the scrapes. It’s a good thing I didn’t see his whole rack; I might have screwed up.”

With the buck looking in another direction, Lisenby was able to raise his .30-06 and prop it on the stand’s railing. He didn’t wait long before putting the crosshairs of his 3×10 Simmons 44 Magnum scope on the buck’s shoulder and squeezing the trigger.

“He was about 200 yards away when I shot,” he said. “He spun off and went into the woods, but I knew it was a good hit.”

At dark, Lisenby got up with a friend, Brian Johnson, and went back to look for the deer. They found the first sign of blood and started trailing the deer back into the woods.

“I’d started out front, but my eyes got tired after a while, and I told him to get out front,” Lisenby said. “He was walking out front of me when he saw him. He said, ‘Man, look at that ….’

“… (W)hen I saw all those points, I wasn’t sure what he really was. We started counting them, but we were really just rolling around on the ground for a while.”

At the processor, Lisenby gave the buck a good going over, looking for any kind of wounds or deformations that might have contributed to the buck’s unusual rack.

“He was normal, not swollen up or anything; there wasn’t anything abnormal about him except his horns,” he said.

Lisenby said no one hunting any of the farms in the same area had ever seen the buck, and it hadn’t shown up on anyone’s trail cameras.

“He’s unreal; I’d really like to find his sheds,” he said.

See other bucks killed this season, and add your own photos, in the Bag-a-Buck Contest!