Carolina Hunting

If luck was in any way involved in Ryan Pridgen’s success at bagging an alligator in North Carolina’s first gator harvest season, it was only in being chosen for a tag. Him killing the lizard was anything but luck; the Raleigh sportsman spent enough hours, time, and energy to locate and kill the gator that he’d qualify for overtime if the whole thing was a job.

It’s that time again: for cooler weather, changing colors and the approach of the whitetail rut. While some hunters get an early start in August and September to fulfill their food-plot dreams, the majority start tilling up the dirt in early October. It’s a busy season for hunters looking to quickly establish a field of greens, because their prime hunting days are eminently approaching.

For some, the third time is the charm, but for Jason Carter of Snow Camp, N.C., it was the fourth try that brought down his once-in-a-lifetime buck — a 10-point brute with an impressive set of antlers — on his family’s 400-acre cattle farm in Southern Alamance County on Sept. 21.

James Williams had not killed a “good” deer in over 30 years. Lamont Williams, his son, was determined to help his father, who taught him how to hunt, to finally get a trophy. After two misses, it was the third time that James finally got a prized nine-point buck that scored 133 5/8 inches of hard horns and weighed in at 165 pounds.  

So, what is it about being a 16-year-old at North Stokes High School in Danbury, N.C., that makes big bucks try and run over you?

On South Carolina’s opening day of the 2018 alligator hunting season, Daniel, Jennifer, and Justin Cunningham, along with Rutt and Candice Iusti left Santee empty-handed and headed back to the upstate after a long but fruitless encounter with a big gator. But they went back this past weekend and filled their tag with a 13-foot, 6-inch beast that weighed 1052 pounds.

Noah Pennell of Roxboro, NC took advantage of a 30-yard shot window to make a deadly connection on a massive 9-point Caswell County buck that had enough tine length, mass, and spread calculations to yield over 138 inches on the Boone and Crockett scale on Sept. 24.

It’s time to start putting the hammer down on bucks across the Carolinas.  This big boy from South Carolina’s Clinton Plantation would be a nice start.

Never again will I have to guess how far away that gobbler is walking. 

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