Deer tentatively scores 135 inches Boone and Crockett.
Pam Styers of Yadkinville has been a hunter for seven years and has harvested several whitetail deer.
But nothing matches the trophy she bagged on Dec. 9, 2011, while hunting for a buck that had been wounded that morning by her father.
“My dad had a trail camera up for over a month, and he’d hunt in the morning, and I’d hunt in the evenings,” said Styers, who works at C.W. Medical Supply in Yadkinville.
Her father, Ricky Styers, was hunting a cornpile near his home when he wounded the buck, putting its right leg out of commission. But the deer wasn’t wounded badly enough to prevent it from escaping.
“Dad had a trail camera up, and at night 13 to 15 deer would show up,” she said. “He wouldn’t have any pictures, then he’d have 200 or 300 in one night.”
At first, the cameras snapped photos of does and small bucks.
“Then the rut started (November), and this buck started showing up,” she said.
Just after daylight Dec. 9, a doe entered the cornpile with the big buck in tow, and Ricky Styers touched off a shot from his 7mm Magnum. The bullet hit the wide-racked buck in its right knee, and it was able to scramble away into a thickly wooded area.
“Dad tracked the deer for probably 300 to 400 yards, but there was very little (blood) sign,” Pam Styers said. “Just a drop here and there. After looking for four hours, he lost the trail.”
Upon hearing about the buck from her father, Pam Styers returned with two friends, Buddy Revels and Scott Phillips. They went to the spot where her dad had found the last blood sign, a place he’d marked with a water bottle. They found more droplets that led into a nearby thicket so thick it forced them to search on hands and knees.
“It was really thick and tough following the trail,” she said. “I got (thorn) cuts in my head, my clothes got torn, and my hands; I couldn’t wash them for a week they were so sore.”
Styers and Revels took a break by sitting on a fallen tree. But by stopping and talking, they made their best move – they were 40 yards from the buck.
“We were sitting there just talking and heard what sounded like a tornado,” she said. “The buck was trying to get up and run, but he couldn’t.”
Revels and Styers, who was carrying a 12-gauge shotgun loaded with 00 buckshot, pushed their way to within 15 feet of the animal. She opened fire, killing the buck.
“I never shot a shotgun like that before,” she said. “It knocked me on my butt.”
The buck, which weighed an estimated 155 pounds, had an 11-point rack with a 24-inch wide inside spread and main beams that also were 24 inches in length.
“The taxidermist, Tyler Grubbs, said it was the widest-rack he’s ever worked on,” Styers said.
The beams and tines – it’s a main-frame 4×4 with three abnormal points) – are extremely thick, although the tines aren’t long. Grubbs estimated it at 135 Boone-and-Crockett inches.
“The response has been amazing,” she said. “Once (photos and the story) were (posted) at Facebook, I’ve heard from Hank Parker, Michael Waddell and Jimmy Sites.”
She will take the rack to the 2012 Dixie Deer Classic in March.
See more than 200 bucks killed this season in the Bag-a-Buck Contest photo gallery!
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