32-Year-Old Pickup Rack Makes Butts County Top-10

Paul Hall, of Duluth, was born and raised in Butts County. Back when he was growing up during the 40s and 50s, Paul’s father Rufus Hall ran a small country store on Highway 16 about 7 miles east of Jackson. The store was located at the corner of Thompson’s Ferry Road, then a dirt road that dead-ended into the Ocmulgee River. As a boy, Paul can still remember the time when old Mr. Thompson shuffled people back and forth across the river on his ferry. Paul grew up hunting small game in the eastern portion of Butts County.

“My daddy put a shotgun in my hands when I was seven or eight years,” Paul remembers. “I hunted quail from the time I was a small boy until my legs started giving out on me back in the late 80s.”

Paul eventually moved to Atlanta and started a very successful masonry business. He frequently returned to his old stomping grounds in Butts County to hunt quail in the fall. During one of those hunts in 1968, something quite unexpected happened.

Paul Hall of Duluth holds the Butts County 16-point rack he found 32 years ago while quail hunting. His son-in-law, Chip Vanderveen of Norcross (right), recently urged Paul to have the rack officially scored.

“Quail season had just opened,” Paul remembers. “To the best of my recollection, deer season in Butts County had only been open for a few years. It was a short season. I believe it started on Nov. 1 and lasted about two weeks. Since I wasn’t a deer hunter in those days, I had to wait for deer season to end before I could start quail hunting. Quail season opened around November 20th.”

Quail season had just opened. Paul was hunting in an area near Thompson Ferry Road about half a mile from the river when his dogs started acting very peculiar.

“They pointed to something in some thick bushes,” Paul remembers. “By the way their tails were wagging, I knew it wasn’t a covey of quail. I walked in to take a closer look and discovered the carcass of a huge buck. He had a massive rack of horns. He had been dead for several days. I took one look at his antlers and I told myself, ‘That’s the biggest buck I’ve ever seen in my life!’ Deer season had just ended the week before, and I was pretty certain that some unlucky hunter had probably shot this buck and lost it.”

Paul immediately gathered in the dogs and went back to his truck. He drove into Jackson and bought a hacksaw at the hardware store. He returned to the scene and cut off the deer’s antlers, taking them home and eventually mounting them on a small plaque.

“I had a lot of fun with that rack over the years with some of my quail-hunting buddies,” Paul said. “I told some might tall tales!”

Paul’s son-in-law, Chip Vanderveen, of Norcross, is a Gwinnett County fireman. Chip married Paul’s daughter about 14 years ago. Nothing was said about the huge rack for about five years. It had been put away in a closet and all but forgotten. Then one day Paul dug out the old rack and showed it to Chip. Last year, Chip took it to the fire station to show some of his co-workers. It created quite a sensation. Tony Cown, a fellow firefighter, told Chip it had to be a record. One thing led to another, and the 32-year-old rack was officially scored by WRD Wildlife Biologist Bill Cooper.

Indeed, Paul’s vintage trophy found so long ago is the largest non-typical whitetail to ever come out of Butts County, according to the county-by-county listings compiled by GON. With a non-typical Boone & Crockett score of 189 6/8 points, it barely misses qualifying for the all-time B&C record book by just over five points (The minimum for a non-typical is 195). However, the impressive rack does qualify for the Boone & Crockett Club’s Three-year Awards Period Record Book (The minimum for which is 185). Paul plans to have it entered as a “pick-up” rack.

The Butts County pick-up is a 16-point rack, a 6×5 with five abnormal points, that scores 189 6/8 non-typical points.

The 16-point rack is a basic 6×5 with five additional abnormal points. The big buck that once carried this magnificent set of antlers was definitely a product of the Ocmulgee River. Both of Georgia’s highest-ranking bucks were also taken within a very close proximity to this mighty river. Less than 15 miles downstream from where Paul found his Butts County giant, Buck Ashe killed his state-record typical in Monroe County near the small community of Juliette in 1961. Buck Ashe’s world-class trophy scored 191 4/8 typical. Approximately 120 miles farther downriver from Juliette, near the small community of Jacksonville in Telfair County, Billy Joe Padgett downed the non-typical state record, the 28-point buck that scored 248 5/8 Boone & Crockett, in November of 1998.

Butts County All-Time 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].