Hunter: Jarret Pierce
Points: 8 (4L, 4R)
County: Dooly
Season: 2015-2016
Hunt Story
We had a couple of pictures on a trail cam in this stand location earlier in the year. On 11 Nov. when we were finished with our morning hunt, we moved a Millennium ladder stand to this area, which is a narrow strip of woods between a peanut field and a cotton/peanut field. I got in the stand about 6:30 AM. There were three hogs feeding in the field when I walked into the stand. Right at daylight a small buck walked in front of my stand out into the peanut field, circled around, and came back in front of my stand again before crossing through the branch and out to the peanut field on the other side. At about 0830, a doe entered from my right about 25 yards out in front of my stand in the woods. She had her tail sticking straight behind her. The 8-point buck came in from the same location chasing her and smelling her. The woods were really thick, so I had to wait until the buck walked into an opening that I could shoot. He was standing off to my right, and he turned and looked at me so I knew he was a shooter buck. The doe walked forward into a clearing and the buck followed her. When he stepped into the clearing, I shot him. He jumped straight forward and up into the air. I could hear him stumbling as he went through the woods. My Dad walked to where the buck was standing when I shot him. There was blood on the ground and on the vines also small pieces of meat or lungs. My Dad decided that we should wait to try and retrieved the deer, so we went and got a cup of coffee and something to eat. We came back about an hour later and trailed the deer for probably 100 or 150 yards before we lost the blood trial at a drainage that was full of water. We decided that we should get a tracking dog. So we called Jody Pate of Crisp County on the GON Tracking Dog List. He brought his tracking dog, Tina Turner. Jody put Tina on the trail, and within about 30 minutes Tina had found the deer about 100 yards from where we stopped looking. Jody and Tina will always be part of the memory of my first "Big Buck."
