Clay County Buck Grossed 192, No. 6 Biggest Taken in 2019

The new No. 2 Clay County buck was killed by Brian Rimer, of Merrit Island, Fla., on the evening of Dec. 7, 2019. The bruiser grossed more than 192 inches and netted 186 1/8 non-typical.

GON just received this score sheet, which means it missed making the Fab-40 in the August issue. However, it currently sits as the No. 6 buck taken during the 2019-20 season.

“I had previously seen a nice buck in the area I took him, so I moved a shooting house over to that field to hunt that buck,” said Brian. “There were no trail cams or anything set up in the area, so I had no clue a monster was even there.”

Brian tries to only take bucks that are 5 1/2 years old or older, and he’s taken some deer in the 130-class, with his biggest being a 139. In the last 30 years of deer hunting, Brian has logged 13,000 hours on the stand. All those hours were fixing to pay off big time.

Brian’s buck was a main frame 10-pointer that had 25 4/8 inches of abnormal inches.

“I got in my stand, and before long I was watching a few does on the edge of the field in the opposite direction,” said Brian. “When I turned to face forward again, there was the buck in the middle of the field walking straight toward my scent trail and about to catch my wind.”

Brian quickly knew this buck wasn’t the one he was originally hunting. This was a much larger buck!

“I had a Three Stooges moment for a split second because he was right there almost in front of me, and I couldn’t believe how heavy he was,” said Brian. “I immediately turned to get my gun up and out the window. When I had my gun ready, the buck was gone! I assumed it hit my wind and split.”

Before Brian could hardly blink, he saw the buck running away, and he was 180 yards out and running toward a woods line.

“I got the gun on the deer and realized I had waited my entire life for a moment like this,” said Brian.

That’s when Brian’s once-in-a-lifetime moment was delivered.

“At the last second the buck took one step to the left, which gave me the opportunity to aim for his vitals,” said Brian. “I pulled the trigger and saw a deer run from that spot in the field.”

Brian immediately started assuming the worse. He even thought that maybe he had missed the buck all together.

“Knowing it was going to be my biggest buck ever, I didn’t want to jump it, so I decided to let it lay overnight,” said Brian. “I did walk to where I thought the deer would be laying if I’d hit it, and I didn’t see the deer. As hard as it was to not go look for the deer right at that moment, and with my friends urging me to go look, I went home. I was sick to my stomach and tried to get some sleep.”

The next morning Brian decided to go and hunt the same stand where he shot the giant buck the evening before.

“I said that I was going to hunt until noon, or until I saw buzzards,” said Brian. “About 45 minutes after sunrise, I saw a small group of crows land in a tree close to where I shot the buck. I told myself I was going to go look if the crows flew down to the ground, but they only stayed a few minutes and then flew off.”

As the crows flew off, so did Brian’s hope.

“An hour later a spike crossed the field and was super spooky,” said Brian. “He then ran off, so again my hope returned that he was spooked by the smell of the big buck in the area.

“Twenty minutes later the crows returned, and as soon as the first crow flew to the ground, I knew the deer was there.”

He got down from his stand and went straight to where he saw the crow. The buck of a lifetime had dropped right in its tracks.

“The bullet had gone in at such an angle that it hit the lungs perfectly,” said Brian. “The reason I was not able to see the buck on the ground previously was because it just happened to fall in a little low spot. The deer I saw run off, and the reason the buck changed direction and I got a shot, was it caught scent of a doe. That’s the tail I saw running off, not the buck’s tail. It was a big emotional roller coaster to say the least!”

The 18-point buck was a main frame 10-pointer that had 25 4/8 inches of abnormal inches on eight abnormal points.

GON’s Official All-Time Clay County Buck Rankings

Editor’s Note: We’re adding photos and hunt stories online to GON’s Georgia Deer Records nearly every day. If you have old photos of the bucks you see listed online, or maybe you’d like to write your story of a buck killed years ago, that’s what gon.com is for. We want you to have a place in our online record book for your great-great grandkids to look at one day. Send what you have to [email protected].