1988 Georgia Deer Season’s First Boone & Crockett

For Wade Patterson, 16, of Omega, a community just south of Tifton, the morning of Nov. 21 will certainly go down as the best deer hunting morning of his life.

That Monday morning, Wade, his father and his friend Jeff Hartsfield slipped into the woods to do a little hunting before school on this father’s 100-acre Worth County farm. Wade climbed into a stand at the top of a hardwood head overlooking a clearcut. At about daylight, Jeff tuned up on his grunt call.

Wade had no idea that there was a huge buck in the area, and at 7:15 when he heard something and looked over his shoulder, he was stunned to see the biggest buck he had ever seen just 15 yards away. The buck was coming from the woods heading toward Jeff’s stand. Wade let the buck step into the clearcut before he lined up his Remington .243 and touched off a shot. Hit in the neck, the buck simply fell dead in its tracks 10 yards away.

The rack has a total of 26 scoreable points and an inside spread of 19 inches. The longest tine measures 14 3/8 inches and the main beam measured 23 2/8 inches. Game and Fish Biologist Bill Cooper green scored the rack at 210 1/8 non-typical B&C inches (minimum for inclusion in the B&C nontypical category is 195 inches).

Wade’s deer, only his second, was estimated to weigh 250 pounds.