This was back in 2023. Almost all of the deer hunting in SC is done by still hunting in stands or dog driving. I’m a member of a club that does both, one property is for dog drives the other is still hunting only.
My dad and I share a stand in our club. We put up a feeder and camera late August. This is the first time our club has still hunted this property so the feeders were pretty new to the deer. With only a few pictures of does and yearlings, I pulled the feeder the first of October and just left it a corn pile. First night we had 3 small bucks on camera, but nothing worth shooting. Over the next week another few small bucks and a whole wad of does. However, a couple of other members had a really nice 10-point on camera in the area. He had never been by our stand, though.
Daddy wanted to hunt but was apprehensive about going with nothing on camera. I told him that the camera is only looking at less than 1% of the area around the stand. The stand is in a hardwood branch that historically deer have always traveled. He went and saw a few of the small bucks and does, but nothing else. Monday, October 16th, I got a picture of a doe that looked to be about 140 pounds. Since I was entered in a local big doe contest, I figured I’d go try to get her.
Wednesday I got in the stand kinda late and bumped a couple deer out of the branch when I was walking to the stand. Sure enough about 20 minutes later a tanker of a doe made her way back into the branch. She walked 25 yards in front of me so couldn’t pass up the video opportunity. With the angle, the bullet entered at the base of the neck and exited in the middle of the opposite shoulder. She jumped in the air and crashed where she landed. Upon further investigation, I realized it was a different doe. The one I killed had a double throat patch…the one in the picture didn’t.
As the evening progressed several more does and a nice young 8-point made their way into the branch. The small 8 began pushing the does all around and he stopped about 80 yards out in some broomstraw and was looking at something behind him. Shortly thereafter he took off running in the opposite direction. I saw the tips of another set of horns in the broomstraw. As soon as I looked at him with the binoculars, I knew it was the big 10. I only had a couple narrow windows through the branches to be able to shoot through. Due to the direction he was headed, I wasn’t sure if I could get another shot. So got the rifle up and gave him the ol’ “mahhhh” to stop him. He looked at me and I took the shot. He disappeared immediately. I was 99% sure he fell right there but I was still a little nervous. I called daddy and told him what I had shot, then climbed down.
There weren’t any very good landmarks due to the broomstraw being chest high, so I just walked straight to where I thought he was standing. Sure enough, he had gone down right were I’d guessed. I sat there for a minute just staring at the biggest buck I had ever had the opportunity to shoot at. I grabbed my phone and took a quick video of me holding the deer. Judging by how hard I was breathing in that video clip, I was apparently more excited than I realized at the time. My phone died right after so I couldn’t call anyone.
I went back to the sign-in box to wait for some help to load my two deer. The first guy to show up had a stand adjacent to mine and had the most pictures of the buck. As I told him what had happened he proceeded to tell me his story from the day before. He got in his stand and was playing a game on his phone just before 6:00 pm. Next thing he remembers he is waking up at 6:25 pm and had a group of does on the corn pile. His phone dinged from his trail camera…as he scrolled through the doe pictures guess who was there from 6:02-6:09pm. Yep, the buck I had just shot.
Just because you don’t get a picture of a buck on camera does not mean he isn’t there, and tree stand naps are great but never know what you will miss.
6mm creedmoor, 103 eldx