Promise to son of a big buck comes true for hunter.
Apparently, there was a bullet that had one big buck’s name on it – or maybe his picture or something.
That’s what Chad Wiggins of Columbia has got to be thinking after an interesting series of events led to him killing a beautiful 8-point buck in full velvet last Friday (Aug. 19) in Richland County.
Wiggins was hunting a small tract of land near Interstate 20, watching a clearing in which he had a corn pile, when he killed the trophy 8-pointer at 7:30 in the evening.
The buck had a 19-1/2-inch inside spread, 10-1/2-inch tines, 5-inch brow tines and weighed 200 pounds on the hoof.
But the “magic bullet” story is even better.
Wiggins had taken a smaller 8-point buck three days earlier, but not without in interesting twist.
Sitting in his tree stand, loading his Remington 742 auto-loading .30-06, he got a bullet jammed in the receiver. He worked out the jam, but the bullet fell to the ground beneath his stand. Later that afternoon, he killed the small 8-pointer.
On Aug. 19, on the way to the woods with his son, he reached into the cup holder between the front seats in his van, held up the bullet that had been jammed and made a prediction to his son.
“This is the one that’s gonna kill a big, big deer,” the elder Wiggins said.
When he got to the woods, however, he put another bullet in the magazine and had the “chosen” bullet second in line.
From his stand 15 feet off the ground, he had just sent a text message about the wind picking up, and then put his cell phone down when he looked to his left and saw the big 8-pointer entering the football field-sized clearing where Wiggins had three corn piles – and it was heading right toward one of them.
“When I saw him, I knew how big he was,” Wiggins said. “My heart just went off. I’ve never been ‘bucked-up’ like that before.”
Wiggins took a shot at 60 yards, but his bullet grazed the top of the buck’s back. The deer responded by racing away, startled, but after a few jumps it came to a screeching halt.
“He just stopped and looked around like he was thinking, ‘What was that loud noise?’” said Wiggins, who put his next shot right behind the buck’s front shoulder, dropping him immediately.
That second shot was the bullet he’d held up for his son earlier in the day.
“I knew that we had some buck activity around that stand, but I never knew he was there until he just walked out there,” Wiggins said.
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