Hunter: Will Stevens
Points: 10 (5L, 5R)
County: Clarke
Season: 2024-2025
Hunt Story
I climbed up the tree around 5:00 pm and got settled in for my evening hunt in Clarke County. Little did I know it would turn out to be one of the most memorable hunts ever. Fast forward to around 6 pm and it was starting to cool off, and you could tell the temperature was dropping. It was around 6:15 I saw the first few deer of the evening, a couple of smaller bucks, and they fed around until 6:30 and eased of toward a creek bottom. Around 6:45 I had six does come out and start feeding and another little buck came out. A few minutes passed and I could hear something coming up from the direction that the two smaller bucks left in and couldn’t see anything and around 7 pm I noticed the smaller buck that was feeding lift his head up and look down hill towards the creek and then he started backing up. Within 2 minutes I had a nice 9-pointer come out and start sparring with the smaller buck. Something told me to look back towards the creek and that’s when I saw the buck I’ve been chasing since opening weekend. He came in a straight line toward the 9-pointer and got to about 20 yards and stop and gave me a perfect up close broadside shot. I watched him run off toward the creek and heard a bunch of loud crashing. I immediately called my fiancée and told her I smoked him and had one of the biggest adrenaline rushes I’ve ever experienced. I gave him around an hour and 15 minutes to die and waited for my buddies to get to me to track him. We talked and I explained how everything went down to them and off we went. After about 30 minutes of walking and tracking him through some of the thickest brush my buddy hollered at me the best words you could ever hear “I found him”. He ran all the way down to the creek and died in the creek. The rest is history. He was rough scored at 139 1/8.
