Worth County 18-Point Officially A Booner

Everyone knew the amazing 18-point Worth County buck killed by Colby Johnson was going to score great, and when the inches were tallied it did not disappoint.

Official Boone & Crockett measurer Bill Cooper scored the buck after the required 60-day drying period and came up with a net of 195 3/8 non-typical. The minimum for B&C’s all-time Big Game Record Book is 195 for a non-typical whitetail.

The buck’s rack set up almost perfect for a high net score with only 3 7/8 inches in side-to-side deductions, so the gross score (total inches) of 199 2/8 wasn’t much higher than the net. Colby’s buck was a main-frame 10-pointer with four tines longer than 11 6/8 inches, and the main-frame 10-point part of the rack scored 162 4/8. It had seven abnormal points that totaled 36 6/8 inches, and for a non-typical those inches are added back to the rack’s score. The only difference in a typical and non-typical is how those abnormal inches are handled in the math. For a non-typical they are added back in, and for a typical they are straight deductions. To determine whether a buck is listed as a typical or non-typical, you simply divide the net scores by the B&C minimums of 170 for a typical and 195 for a non-typical, and the higher percentage is the “better” score and the one used. Typicals and non-typicals are scored exactly the same, the only difference is how the abnormal points are handled in the math of the net scores.

Colby’s buck is the first official “Booner” of the 2020-21 Georgia deer season.

Colby Johnson’s Original Story Published Nov. 5, 2020:
It began with a random trail-cam picture last season… You’re enjoying another deer season in Georgia, hopeful, then one day you check a camera, and everything changes.

This buck only revealed itself in front of Colby Johnson’s trail-cameras a handful of times, but one picture was more than enough to get Colby’s undivided attention.

Colby Johnson, 28 years old, lives in Colquitt County, and he deer hunts in the neighboring county to the north, Worth County. The story of Colby and a giant 18-point, 200-inch buck began last season in early November, when Colby sat out a weekend hunt because of the weather.

“Where I was hunting was in planted pines,” Colby said. “I was hunting in a climber, and it was so windy I didn’t go. When I went and checked the camera, I had gotten one picture of the buck in there. I said, ‘Dang, that’s a monster.'”

It’s hard to say that calling a buck a ‘monster’ is an understatement, but this deer probably needed another superlative or two. The hunt was on.

“One evening he came across the clearcut. He was about 200 yards away. I put it on him and pulled the trigger,” Colby said. “When I got over there I couldn’t find any sign, so I called a guy with tracking dogs.

“He put the dogs out, and they ran around in circles for a little bit, and he said, ‘You didn’t hit that deer.'”

“I said, ‘What? I know I did.’ He said, ‘My dogs track off injured deer, that deer wasn’t hit.’

“I just straight up whiffed. Then I saw him on camera a few days later. I saw him one more time last season, just a quick glance, but I couldn’t get on him.”

And like most huge bucks these days, this one got a nickname.

“One of my buddies named him ‘Boogie Man.’ He said because the buck haunted me.”

This summer Colby started feeding in July, but the Boogie Man never showed.

“He was driving me crazy. I had nine cameras out. I had cameras on trails, on food, on scrapes. I didn’t get a single picture until the week before gun season. Then I got a picture two weeks later, and then two weeks later I got a picture of him on a scrape.”

Once the season started, Colby said he hunted every single day. But he never saw a glimpse of the buck, and even with nine cameras out, he was hardly getting any pictures. Meanwhile, Colby wasn’t the only hunter in the area who was aware of this buck. Another hunter told GON that at least three landowners had pictures.

“I had some nice deer shot around me,” Colby said. “I was just waiting any day to get that picture, and see Boogie Man dead.”

Which brings us to yesterday, Tuesday, Nov. 4. Colby watched daylight break yet again in those Worth County woods, but during this morning sit, Colby knew it was time to try something different.

“I got down at 7:30. I had been feeding right here since July. I wasn’t getting any pictures. And he’s obviously not coming to this food plot.

“I was easing along, looking for a place to hang my climber for a hunt that evening. At one point I sat on the ground overlooking a bottom, and I saw a doe and a piebald deer. I sat there for about 30 minutes, and then I headed to go to take a camera off a tree in an area I hadn’t hunted yet. In the few pictures I’d gotten of him, he was coming from that way in some of the pictures.

“I got the camera down, and right then a doe ran straight up to me. I said, ‘Dang, what’s going on.’ She never saw me, she was feeding, and then she ran off. When she got out of sight, I pushed down into a bottom, easing through the woods, and now I’m seeing rubs and scrapes. I was thinking this is where he could be.

“Then I saw a rack. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was him. He turned and looked back in my direction. I had the gun over my shoulder, pulled it up and got it on him. I shot, he dropped.”

Colby Johnson, of Hartsfield, with his 18-point Worth County buck taken on Nov. 4, 2020.

Colby’s buck has 18 total scorable points (longer than an inch). It’s typical main-frame (normal points) sets up as a 4×4, or maybe a 5×5 depending on how matching crab claws are handled by official scorers. Either way those crab claws are handled, it won’t hurt the buck’s score. It’s either going to help the main-frame typical part of the score as a 5×5 if the lower points of the crab claws are judged as the ends the main beams. Or it’s going to help the non-typical inches that are added back in as a non-typical if the upper points of the crab claws are judged the ends of the main beams, meaning the lower points are considered abnormals.

The main frame part of the rack is very symmetrical for a buck that’s otherwise very non-typical. Getting even deeper in the weeds on the scoring process here, but even non-typicals get deductions, but only for the main-frame side-to-side differences. All those additional non-typical points—lots of them, and some long ones—are added in. Long story short, this buck not only looks incredible, it’s going to score well. Local hunter Keith Moree put a tape on it—twice—and he came up with right at 200 total inches. He tallied just under 200 the first time, and just over the second time.

“He’s got so much crazy junk I missed a point the first time,” Keith said.

Colby is a GON subscriber and his buck is entered in Week 8 of the Truck-Buck Contest.

Worth County Best Bucks Of All-Time