Carolina Hunting

At 16-years-old, Branson Clement of Kannapolis, N.C. killed a buck unlike most hunters in the Carolinas will ever encounter in the woods on Oct. 27 on his family’s tree farm in Chesterfield County, S.C. The 10-point buck’s rack measured 150 inches and was so symmetrical that less than one inch was deducted when green scoring.

Better late than never? Nope, that wouldn’t have worked for Joshua “Fatback” Sellers of Patrick, S.C., last Friday.

A 19-year-old student at Northeastern Technical College in Cheraw, S.C., Sellers was planning on heading to his deer stand later that afternoon when his brother, Steven, called and urged him to head out earlier. So he got ready and was in his tower stand, overlooking a very young cutover, by 3:30.

Most deer hunters across the Carolinas will never get the chance to kill a 150-class whitetail deer, but on Sunday, Nov. 4, Mark Tinsley of Allendale, S.C. not only got the chance to kill such a deer, it was actually the second time he killed the same deer. 

After Jeff Annis of Wilton, N.C. got a few interesting photos last year on the trail cameras located on his Granville County hunting land of a mature, non-typical buck with a little palmation on its rack, he was hoping to catch a glimpse of the deer in person. His trail cameras caught two night photos of it this year, and it had grown quite a bit.

Sometimes the best endings are the ones that come as a complete surprise.

Larry Rhoden of Boiling Springs in Spartanburg County did not get to hunt during bow season and he did not really expect to shoot a buck on the afternoon of Oct. 12, the opening day of gun season.

John McDonald of Woodruff, S.C., was ready to let his wife take a nice buck when the two climbed into their deer stand the morning of Oct. 14. But a couple of hours later, a truly magical whitetail showed up, and McDonald wound up on the trigger, taking a tall, narrow, heavy 11-point buck that measured almost 150 inches.

Jason Smythe first saw the big buck on on his trail cameras on the Smythe Farm near Ridgeway in 2016. He was a big 8-point sporting a rack with high, wide tines. The rack was so impressive Smythe dubbed him Goal Posts.

Justin Price of Pageland, S.C. killed a 140-class buck, his personal best, on Nov. 3 just four hours after the big deer showed up on his Chesterfield County hunting property’s trail cameras for the first time. And he killed it very close to the same stand he killed his previous personal best, a 129 7/8-inch buck that he took during the month of November four years earlier.

Kennady Bearden decided she wanted to go deer hunting, but there was a problem. All of 8-years-old, she could hold her daddy's .270 deer rifle to her shoulder and reach the trigger, but she could not get close enough to the scope to see through it.

Preston Porter of Riegelwood, N.C. killed a giant 8-point buck that green-scored 140 6/8 inches in Columbus County on Oct. 26 at 10 a.m., and while he prides himself on putting in a lot of time and hard work when deer hunting, he has no problem admitting this trophy buck was more a product of luck than anything else.