Chickasawhatchee Deer Hunt More Than Memorable

I really like happy endings. Such was the case for Jonathan Newsome, of Brunswick, during the Dec. 3-5 quota deer hunt at Chickasawhatchee WMA.

“We had been planing this trip for months, but when it got down to leaving, it seemed as if we could not catch a break,” said Jonathan. “First, I took off the wrong days at work. Then I got to looking at the tires on my truck and realized they were not safe to make this trip, so one day before we left, I had to put four new tires on my truck. Then, my wife’s car was broken into, and her purse was stolen.”

Despite the roadblocks, Jonathan, his wife and several friends headed to the southwest Georgia WMA, where their luck began to turn around.

“The first morning my wife killed an 8-point, and my friend’s dad killed a nice 6.”

Two bucks on the ground was certainly a start, but their hunting luck would get even better after scouting out a new area where they found some big rubs. The afternoon of Dec. 4 would be one to remember.

“I set my wife up in what we believed to be the best spot, and I just found a tree in the back,” said Jonathan. “As the afternoon grew old, I remembered I had a grunt call. I’ve never had luck with one before, but I said it couldn’t hurt, so I pulled it out and began to grunt every 20 to 30 minutes.”

At 5:15 p.m., Jonathan heard something walking in an area of thick cypress trees.

“I started looking, and I saw a deer moving slowly,” said Jonathan. “As I took a better look, I realized it was a giant buck and started shaking. Yes, I had buck fever bad, so as I’m looking through my scope at the biggest buck of my life, I knew it was now or never. I shot, and I thought I had missed, so I jacked another round in.”

Jonathan got another shot off, and the buck fell to the dirt.

“I got down to get a better look at him, and out of nowhere he jumped up and took off,” said Jonathan. “I was devastated and wanted to cry, thinking my dream deer got away. I gave him a few minutes and proceeded to track blood. When I finally got my eyes on him, I knew something was not quite right. I got a closer look, and I had (first) shot one side of his rack completely off. Me and my wife back tracked really carefully and luckily found it barely sticking out of the water. Boy was I relieved.”

Jonathan called his buddy Tony Courson to come help drag the big buck more than 800 yards to the truck. The beast weighed 200 pounds, and when Jonathan held the rack back in place, the spread was 22 6/8 inches wide. Since the rack was broken it won’t be eligible for any of GON’s big buck rankings list, but it’s still a fine animal and certainly worth a story here in GON.

“After all my excitement, Tony says, ‘OK, time to go get mine.’ He had shot a decent 8-point, so we hurried and got his and ended up with four racked bucks on this trip,” said Jonathan.