Buck Of Lifetime Comes From Hart County Stomping Grounds

Billy Segars, of Hartwell, with his Hart County buck from Nov. 2, 2021.

By Kayla Segars

My husband, Billy Segars, has been hunting northeast Georgia since he was old enough to walk. His father would let him tag along to the hunting club since he was around three or four years old. He has always sat by himself. To this day, the  pair has never sat in the same stand. They’d be real close, just not in the same stand.

When Billy was too young to handle a gun, he started hunting with an air blower from his dad’s automotive shop because it resembled a pistol. After a couple of seasons with the air blower, he graduated to a pellet gun. And finally, once he was responsible enough to carry an actual gun, he got to hunt with a 12-gauge automatic, but he only got to carry one shell at a time. 

Each fall has looked the same for our family. We even had to schedule our wedding around the rut. We’re in the woods every week from September to January. As a wife, you can either hate it or learn to love it. I chose to love it with him.

He has five Hart County bucks in the mid to high 130’s on the wall, but during the 2021 season, he finally got a chance at his biggest to date.

We got velvet pictures of a group of nice mature bucks running one of our places in July 2021, and we decided then it was going to be a group effort to get one of them in the back of the truck. These bucks are smart, and it takes time, patience and persistence to even get a chance.

We added new stands to the property in hopes of cutting them off when they’re coming and going. During bow season, the bucks never showed back up. We had cameras all over the property trying to pick up on some kind of a pattern, but they just stopped showing up.  

On Oct. 20, we finally started getting some fresh scrapes from what appeared to be our mature bucks. On Friday, Oct. 29, at 7:19, we got a nice trail-camera picture of what we thought was the perfect 10 of the group. He finally was getting closer to us during shooting hours.

On Nov. 2, 2021, we had plans of going to another property because I had a target buck over there that was showing his face. I’m not quite familiar with the hardwoods there yet, so my husband has to walk me to my blind each hunt. 

We woke up later than normal, so I told him we were just going to have to go to “Grannies” since it was closer to the house and we could still get in the stand at a decent time. 

We get settled into our stands, and the trail camera went off at 7:40 with my target buck at the property we didn’t go to. To say I was frustrated was an understatement.

At 8:13, I heard my husband’s 300 mag go off. He texted me and said he thought he had a nice one down.

He called me at 8:24 and told me it was the buck that he had been chasing. I may have shed a tear getting out of my stand because I wanted this for him so badly. He had probably had his worst season to date. He even had to call a tracking dog on a trophy buck that was never recovered. 

It took us an hour of dragging to get him out of the hardwoods. It wasn’t until we got him up to the old road that I realized just what a deer he had harvested. In 44 years of hunting, he finally harvested a buck of a lifetime from our stomping grounds in Hart County.

His picture may not make the magazine, and this probably isn’t going to be the biggest buck of the week for the Truck-Buck, but I always told him when he killed one bigger than what he had on the wall, that I would send his pictures to the GON, and I am a lady of my word.

Editor’s Note: Billy’s buck ended up with a net score of 139 inches and is currently No. 16 of all time in Hart County. It finished in fifth place for Week 8 during the 2021-22 season of Truck-Buck.