TRAVIS BREWER This Stokes County buck, taken by Travis Brewer, has drop tines on both beams and is the biggest non-typical ever taken in full velvet by a North Carolina bowhunter.

Stokes County arguably could be called the “buckle” of North Carolina’s trophy-deer belt, which stretches from Northampton County in the northeast to Ashe County in the state’s northwest corner.

North of Winston-Salem and bordering deer-rich southern Virginia, the Dan River drainage transverses the region roughly west to east; the county also has Hanging Rock State Park, a deer sanctuary, at its center.

Fairly hilly, this foothills county has ridges covered by pines for shelter and hardwoods that produce tremendous mast for whitetails. Agricultural fields and pastures cover its valleys. God apparently looked at North Carolina and decided the area should become a trophy-deer paradise.

A series of huge bucks taken by Tarheel State hunters over the past decade has proven the point decisively.

Last year, Stephen Galyean of Winston-Salem arrowed a Stokes County buck that scored 160-4/8 and captured the Dixie Deer Classic’s top prize for typical archery kills. While walking in the woods in 2007, Jeremy Mitchell discovered a 138-4/8 rack that took the Classic’s top “found” category. In 2003, Greg Robertson’s 165-1/8 bow typical won that division, and in 2002, Buddie Adkins dropped a Boone-and-Crockett qualifier that took the top-gun typical prize at the Classic: a buck that boasted 173-6/8 inches of antlers.

So it’s no wonder that one of the best bucks of 2008 also came from the same county. While it didn’t win an award at the 2009 Dixie Deer Classic, Brian Oakley’s buck, which grossed 163-7/8 non-typical, would be a magnificent prize for any hunter.

Oakley, a 35-year-old lieutenant for the Reidsville Police Department in neighboring Rockingham County, knows the region like the back of his hand. And his history of hunting whitetails there was a key to his success last year.

“I’ve hunted a particular piece of land over there for 15 years,” said Oakley, a native son who graduated from South Stokes High School and later became a deputy sheriff in his home county before moving to Reidsville. “I’ve killed my share of nice deer at Stokes County,” he said.

Those bucks include an 8-pointer with 12-inch G2s and a 19-inch spread, several 18-inch 8-point bucks and a 10-pointer he downed with a bow.

Oakley has earned his wall of trophies the old-fashioned way — he worked for them.

“It’s farmland that belongs to someone else, but I’ve worked the land for the lease all these years,” he said. “I’ve planted food plots and mowed pastures to keep the lease.”

The farm also has pastures planted in orchard grass — a favorite of whitetails — and some tobacco fields. But that landscape may not be as important as the terrain that surrounds those fields.

“It’s got thickets the deer use for bedding areas, and there are hardwood ridges with oak trees,” Oakley said, “so the deer have got some place to rest and natural sources of food.”

In fact, while scouting, Oakley had discovered signs of an apparently big-antlered buck inside one of the bedding areas.

“I knew there was a big deer there because I saw he’d been staying in one of the thickets,” he said. “I saw the signs about a month before I killed him. I was in the thicket and found about 100 rubs on trees that were as big around as the calves of my legs.”

Oakley said he was lucky he got a chance at the buck, even though he knew exactly where to place his stand.

“My wife, Sherri, saw the deer two weeks before I shot him,” he said, “but she was hunting with a .243, and it was so thick where she was, she couldn’t take an ethical shot, so she let him walk.”

The husband and wife don’t shoot small bucks, as a rule.

“We don’t shoot anything small anymore,” Oakley said.

He and his wife hunted from the same stand, a permanent wooden ladder platform stand he’d built a year earlier.

“I went in (the thicket) one summer after doing some scouting and found a lot of trails, so I put up the stand,” he said. “Then I backed out of there and didn’t hunt (the stand) that year. I didn’t want to hunt it right after I’d put up (the stand), because I made noise, and I knew I’d probably spooked the deer out of there.”

The ladder stand has a high seat, 20 feet off the ground.

“I put a nice, comfortable seat on the platform, and it has a rail around it to rest a rifle,” Oakley said.

The stand was approximately 150 yards from one of the pastures, inside a 74-acre patch of woods surrounded by fields and food plots.

“The woods had been timbered out and had become a cutover,” he said. “It’s got thickets, some oak and holly trees.”

The morning of Dec. 6, 2008, broke clear, cold and windy, with the temperature in the high 20s, Oakley said.

“I only hunt this stand when the wind is coming from the southwest, and that’s what it was doing that morning,” he said.

Oakley had used a “drag rag” soaked in deer scent to walk to his stand, which he reached well before daylight.

“I was sitting there, and it was about 8:30 a.m. when (the buck) came through,” the hunter said.

When Oakley first saw the deer at 130 yards in the thick woods, he didn’t realize at first he was watching a whitetail.

“All I could see was the white of his antlers moving through (the woods), so I thought he was a coyote at first,” he said.

Earlier in the day, a group of does had run through the same area, so Oakley figured the buck probably was following their scent..

“There wasn’t anything in front of him, so he may have been backtrailing one of the does,” he said. “These three does had been gone about 35 or 40 minutes. When they came through, they’d acted funny — they’d run, then stop and take off running again. That’s probably why I thought when I first saw the deer I thought it was a coyote.”

Oakley was using a Remington 300 Ultra Mag loaded with handloaded 180-grain Nosler tips.

“I do a lot of shooting, so I re-load my own bullets,” said Oakley, who said he shoots “because I enjoy it.” He regularly visits a 1,000-yard rifle practice area in North Wilkesboro to keep his long-range skills intact. He also is a groundhog hunter, a sport that requires a steady hand.

A 130-yard shot across a brush-filled ravine might seem daunting to some hunters, but Oakley said his practice shooting gave him confidence.

The buck was walking along a trail across a draw from where Oakley was in a stand that was nearly level, elevation-wise, from the hunter.

“I put up my Steiner binoculars to get a look and when I saw the antlers, I went ‘Oh, goodness,’” he said.

Oakley said he took a few deep breaths to calm his nerves, then picked out an opening where he figured the buck would walk. He concentrated on putting the crosshairs on the buck’s shoulder when the big deer stepped into a clearing, then squeezed the trigger, and the rifle jumped.

“(The buck) went down immediately,” the hunter said. “He didn’t move at all; that’s why I use a big (caliber) rifle. I want to put a deer down when I shoot him.”

Oakley lowered his rifle, climbed down from his stand and walked to the buck. He was stunned when he saw the wide-rack and heavily-palmated beams between the second and third tines on both sides of the deer’s headgear.

The first circumference measure on the right beam was 11 inches, and the corresponding spot on the left beam measured 7-6/8 inches.

“I went and got my 4-wheeler to load him up, but I think I could have dragged the buck out of there by myself,” he said.

His cousin, Barry Welch, was the second person to see the buck after Oakley.

“Barry was amazed and thought it would be a state record,” he said.

Oakley said he later heard comments from local residents who had seen the buck at night while riding on local roads.

“One guy said he saw it five miles from where I killed it,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s true, but if it is, it shows how far bucks travel.”

His trophy is the only deer killed from that stand. The buck’s outside spread was 23 inches, and its inside spread was 20-4/8.

Taxidermist Mark Ore of Pine Hall, who prepared the mount for the 2009 Dixie Deer Classic, estimated the buck’s age 7˝ years. Its age was reflected in 130 pounds of body weight and that the deer had been defending his territory. Oakley said both of the deer’s ears had ragged cuts from battles with other bucks.

“The people at the Dixie Deer Classic scored it at 163-7/8 gross non-typical, 156 as a gross typical and a net 140-7/8 typical,” Oakley said.

The left main beam totaled 24-2/8 inches, the right side main beam 24-6/8, the left brow tine 6-6/8, and the next tines 11-4/8 and 10-3/8. The right brow tine was 6-6/8, two of the tines 10 and 7-4/8 inches. Circumference measurements on the left beam were 5-4/8, 4-6/8, 7-7/8 and 4-6/8, while they were 5-4/8, 5, 11 and 4 on the right beam. The tip-to-tip spread was 16 6/8 inches.

Because the rack was 31-/8 inches shy of Boone-and-Crockett minimum as a non-typical and 29-2/8 inches shy of the B&C mark as a typical, Oakley’s buck was classified as a typical at the Classic. That typical designation left the buck far short of winning the top typical award.

“That was kind of disappointing,” Oakley said. “But it was a tremendous thrill to take a deer like this.”