Hunter’s Journal: Greene Co. Great Mud Hunt

By Robert Caldwell & Carroll Johnson

Deer hunting is a sport that means different things to different people. The same could be said about deer hunting clubs.

The Herb Bonner Hunt Club has been existence since 1925. Our 24 members are career agricultural professionals in the public sector. Members are employees of the University of Georgia and the USDA Agricultural Research Service. Mr. Herb Bonner was a friend of the club during the early years whose employer, Chilean Nitrate (a fertilizer company), sponsored annual hunts. Today, the Herb Bonner Hunt Club has no corporate sponsorship but was named in memory of our club’s friend in 1956.

The 2015 hunt could have easily been known as the Great Mud Hunt since it rained steadily for two days.  Members arrived at camp in Greene County on Sunday, Nov. 8, with the afternoon spent scouting and setting up stands. The steady, cold rain meant minimal scouting and quick stand set-up.

I am a newly voted member who works at the UGA Tifton Campus and was assigned a stand on a
hardwood ridge that separated two pastures. Carroll Johnson, a co-worker and 29-year member, set up a ground blind in 15-
year old planted pines. The ground blind was weather-proofed with an old poncho and covered with camouflage netting for additional seclusion.

The first two days of hunting in the steady rain produced few deer. Carroll woke early Wednesday with a brain-splitting migraine headache and could not hunt. I had already pulled my stand due to no deer sightings. After breakfast, all the other hunters headed out for the last morning hunt. Carroll and I stayed in camp, drinking coffee and watching an impressive sunrise.

About 30 minutes after sunrise, I spontaneously decided to hunt somewhere but could not return to my assigned area without disturbing hunters. Carroll offered his stand in the planted pines, which was offset from where others were hunting.  

I left camp with Carroll still drinking coffee and nursing a pounding headache. Luckily, I managed to find the ground blind without difficulty and immediately noticed that everything about the setup was for a lefty (Carroll), and I shoot right-handed. To compound my frustrations, some of the camouflage netting slid down and nearly covered the shooting window. 

Despite shifting the hunting stool and endless fidgeting, I soon noticed a young doe crossing at a leisurely pace from right to left about 50 yards through the planted pines. Trailing the doe was a large buck. At that point, the buck briefly paused, looked at the ground blind and quickly turned back down the brushy trail—only to stop a few yards to glance at the blind one more time. Presented with the undesirable front quartering shot, I fired and the buck vanished. I then had a fleeting glance of antlers to my right streaking through a thicket of trifoliate orange shrubs.

Back in camp, Carroll’s cell phone chirped at 7:37 a.m. with an incoming text message from me: “May have killed your big buck.”

Carroll joined me at the ground blind. I sat in the blind and vectored Carroll to where I thought the deer was standing when I shot. We began looking for blood, hair, gristle or anything to establish the trail taken. I mentioned seeing a large deer with antlers running through the trifoliate orange thicket. With no obvious signs of a hit, we spread out and worked through the thicket, often on hands and knees.  There was absolutely no sign of a hit.

I was certain the deer had been hit hard, but there was no evidence—none.  To refocus on the search, Carroll went back to where I thought the deer was standing. Based on his own experiences, Carroll followed that transect a little farther away from the ground blind. That led to an intersection with a heavily used trail. Following that trail in the general direction where the buck ran, Carroll soon noticed four deep tracks in the saturated soil made by a very large deer trying to urgently leave in an extreme hurry. Carroll followed that trail, but the tracks soon vanished.  

He returned to where the tracks were last seen, shifted to the right and found a less obvious trail that paralleled the main trail. Following that trail, Carroll found my buck about 40 yards from where it was standing when shot.  There was not a single drop of blood that led to the deer. The quartering shot entered in front of the shoulder and continued deep into the buck’s chest and abdomen, without exiting. Despite shooting a .308 at a fairly short range, the front quartering shot explains why there was no exit hole and blood trail.

Carroll then made a toilet paper trail directly back to the ground blind, and that was where he found me. Carroll masterfully deadpanned that I needed to follow the toilet paper trail. My glum expression brightened a bit. Carroll said that he had not found any blood, but had “some promising sign.” As we followed the toilet paper trail, he intentionally kept feeding me lines of extreme vagueness. While dutifully staring at the trail of toilet paper squares, I was abruptly stopped by Carroll. He grabbed me by the shoulders and pointed ahead to the dead buck. Predictably, I nearly collapsed at the sight of my trophy, the buck of anybody’s lifetime.

There are several quirky events related to my successful hunt.  Obviously, hunting on somebody else’s stand is an interesting aspect of this tale, along with my arrival at the stand at least 30 minutes after daylight and sitting for only three minutes before the deer appeared. The ground blind was set up in the pouring rain on Sunday with no opportunity to scout for buck sign. The location looked good, and that was about it; there was no indication of a dominant buck in the area. In retrospect, the planted pines were between bedding areas and food sources. It was clear that the hot little doe was leading the buck on a merry jaunt that led to his demise. When found, my deer was not in the trifoliate orange thicket. I was certain that I saw the large antlered deer running through the thicket after the shot, and that is why so much effort was spent searching in that area. I now realize that there was a second large buck trailing the doe, and that was the deer that I saw fleeting glimpses in the trifoliate orange thicket.

This story is about a successful hunt and my trophy buck. The story is also about the Herb Bonner Hunt Club; the unpretentious friendship, camaraderie and sportsmanship that kept this club together for 91 years. I am honored to be part of that outstanding group of agricultural professionals and sportsmen.

My buck was a typical 9-point with a net score of 146 2/8, placing second for the Week 9 Northern Zone in the GON Truck Buck contest. The trophy also won me the prestigious Grits Award for the largest deer killed on the annual Herb Bonner Hunt.