The Slaughter Mountain Mystery Buck

Jesse Payne, a 33-year U.S. Forest Service employee and veteran deer hunter, couldn’t believe what had just happened. Jesse had climbed almost to the top of Slaughter Mountain and had just shot at and missed the biggest buck he had ever seen. Jesse was slowly making his way to the top of the mountain when this giant buck came running toward him. The buck saw him and turned to run in the opposite direction. Jesse quickly raised his old Model 94 Winchester and fired one shot at the fleeing buck. At the shot it didn’t appear that he had hit the rapidly disappearing buck. After searching for evidence of blood or hair, it was apparent he had missed. Try as he might, he couldn’t find any indication that his shot had connected.

After searching the area thoroughly, he finally started the long trek down the mountain to his truck. On his trip out he jumped two other nice bucks but couldn’t get a shot at either of them. Jesse had never had a day like this in his long deer hunting career.

Jesse’s encounter with the bucks on Slaughter Mountain occurred in the early part of November 1984. The Monday morning following his big-buck encounter Jesse came into work telling us all about this big buck he had seen. Jesse and I both worked for the U.S. Forest Service on what was then the Brasstown Ranger District of the Chattahoochee National Forest. He was normally very quiet and didn’t have a lot to say. This morning was different, he was really excited.

Jesse described this buck as having lots of tall points with heavy beams and a wide spread. Jesse had deer hunted in the mountains for many years and had killed a lot of nice bucks. He had worked for the U.S. Forest Service since 1951 and had seen several big bucks taken over the years by other hunters, as well. When he said this was the biggest he had ever seen, I knew it had to be something special.

Jesse didn’t hunt from tree stands, but hunted by what is called still hunting. In still hunting the hunter quietly slips along, stopping every few steps and looks and listens for deer. Jesse was good at this type of hunting. I learned to hunt this way from Jesse and the other older hunters who I worked with at the U.S. Forest Service.

Jesse was determined to kill this giant buck he had missed. He took some time off from work to continue to hunt the Slaughter Mountain area for about another week. Try as he might, he never saw the big buck again. He finally gave up. He said he was through hunting that area for the rest of the season.

When Jesse said he was through looking for the big buck, I told him I would like to try to see if I could have any luck finding the buck he missed.

Jesse said, “Go ahead. I’m through with that area for now.”

That was all I needed to hear. Even though this area was public land, I didn’t want to interfere with Jesse’s hunting. The next week was Thanksgiving, so I took off from work so I could hunt several days in a row on Slaughter Mountain.

Slaughter Mountain and its sister peak Blood Mountain get their names from a Cherokee legend that describes a fierce battle that took place here years ago. The Creek and Cherokee Indian tribes fought each other for domination of the mountain territory. The Cherokee’s won the battle, and the legend says there was so much bloodshed that the streams ran red with blood. These two mountains are the highest peaks in the southern portion of Union County.

Many big bucks have been killed in this area over the last several years. One buck that was killed near here years ago has a gross Boone and Crockett score of more than 180 points. I don’t think it has ever been officially scored.

Early on the Monday morning before Thanksgiving I drove around the old road from Wolfpen Gap on the west side of Slaughter Mountain. I parked at the end of the old road and headed up toward the top of the mountain. I made my way up to the Duncan Ridge Trail that runs just underneath the top of Slaughter Mountain. When I neared the top, I left the trail and started easing on toward the summit. I hadn’t gone far when I noticed a shed antler lying on the ground. I picked it up and was amazed at the size of it. I thought this must surely be from the buck Jesse had shot at and missed. The antler was massive with a 22-inch long beam. It had five long points and one sticker point. I searched and searched for the other antler but couldn’t find it. I continued to hunt this area but couldn’t find any fresh sign that I thought was made by the big buck.

Later in the week it snowed about 3 inches. I went back to the area where I had found the shed antler. I just had a feeling that the big buck was around somewhere close.

As I made my way out to the top of Slaughter Mountain, I saw a couple of tines of a shed antler sticking up through the snow. This antler was about 100 yards from where I had found the first one. I reached down and when I pulled it up out of the snow I realized I had found the matching side of the big buck’s rack from the previous year. This antler was even more impressive than the first one. It had six main points and a sticker. It had a seventh point but it wasn’t quite an inch long.

I couldn’t believe what great shape the shed antlers were in after lying on the ground since the previous spring. Usually the squirrels would have chewed them up after a few months. That year was really poor for mast, and maybe there weren’t many squirrels around.

The author’s son Davy with the shed antlers from the Slaughter Mountain Buck.

Thanksgiving Day rolled around and my cousin, Milton Bradley, went with me to hunt that morning. We both headed up toward the top of Slaughter Mountain. Milton went on the west side of the mountain and hunted near the top. I went back to the top to hunt on the east side. It wasn’t long until I heard him shoot. I thought he had probably killed one of the big bucks, but it turned out he had killed a small 6-pointer. Thanksgiving week came and went, and I hadn’t seen any bucks, much less the three big ones Jesse had seen.

Before I went back to work the next week I mounted the shed antlers on a plaque. I wrapped the base in felt so it would look like a complete rack. I went in to work carrying the antlers. I showed them to Jesse and asked him if that was the buck he had shot at and missed on Slaughter.

He took one look and said, “Where did you kill that?”

After leading him to believe I had killed his buck, I finally told him it was just the buck’s sheds from the previous year. He said they certainly looked like the rack from the big buck he had seen.

The first firearms season was quickly drawing to a close, and I was determined to keep trying for this large buck. The season was to close on Dec. 2. I took off work on Friday, Nov. 30 to see if maybe I could find the big buck before the season was over.

It was breaking day when I parked my truck at the end of the old road that goes south from Wolfpen Gap. I grabbed my rifle and gear and headed up to the top of Slaughter Mountain. It was a cold, clear morning of about 19 degrees with no wind. It would be a perfect morning for hunting.

When I reached the top of Slaughter, I decided to hunt toward the south side of the mountain. This side of the mountain has a lot of mountain laurel thickets (locally called ivy) with exposed rock faces. With the summit of Slaughter at about 4,365 feet in elevation, there are some great views from these rock cliffs.

As I was making my way down through the scattered ivies, I saw two deer to my right. I wasn’t able to tell if one was a buck or not. They headed into some thick ivy. They didn’t appear to be spooked. I was sure they hadn’t smelled me as I had the wind in my face when I saw them. I think they just heard something and were moving away.

I looked for a tree I could climb and saw a small white oak tree about 8 inches in diameter in front of me. It had a couple of small horizontal limbs about 12 feet off the ground. I thought if I could climb up to the limbs I could stand there and see over the ivy thicket better. I slung my rifle over my shoulder and shinnied up the tree. I made it up to the lower limb and was able to stand on it. I was then able to hook my left arm over the other limb to steady myself.

I guess I stood on that skinny limb for about 30 minutes before I heard what I thought was a deer coming back my way. It was coming from the direction that the two deer had gone. It turned out to be a deer alright, and it was a big buck! All I could tell was that its rack was really wide. When it stepped into the clear at about 30 yards, I shot and it hit the ground.

I excitedly slid down the white oak and walked up to my buck. Turns out I hadn’t killed the big buck from the sheds, but this one was impressive enough for me, especially after putting in so much time and effort hunting this steep and rough area.

The buck had almost an 18-inch spread but had short points. The right side had four points, but the left only had a very short brow tine with a bay tine on the beam. This made it just a big 7-pointer. When I weighed the buck later it only dressed out at 91 pounds. There weren’t many acorns that year, which is probably one reason it didn’t weigh more, plus it was peak rutting time when bucks don’t eat much.

I figured that this was probably one of the bucks that Jesse had seen that morning when he had his encounter with the big buck. The season was just about over, and that was my last hunt for the year on Slaughter Mountain. Disappointingly, even with all my effort, I had not located Jesse’s big buck.

Well, after the season was over I heard of two big bucks that had been killed on Slaughter Mountain. I thought surely one of these must have been Jesse’s big buck. One was killed by Terry Stover near Slaughter Gap, and the other was killed by Gary Garrin, of Morganton. Gary killed his buck above Lake Winfield Scott on the west side of Slaughter Mountain.

I met Terry and measured his buck’s rack and took pictures. Terry’s buck was an 11-pointer and scored around 140 Boone and Crockett points. It looked a lot like the sheds I had found, but his deer’s antlers looked like a younger buck. They didn’t have the sticker points, and the points on each side were reversed from those on the sheds I had found. Usually, the older a buck gets, the abnormalities, such as sticker points, are more pronounced. This puzzled me. All I could think was that maybe this was one of the big buck’s offspring.

I later made contact with Gary Garrin and went to his home in Morganton. By this time he’d had the buck’s head mounted. It was a big mountain buck, but it didn’t look anything like the shed antlers. It was a main-frame 8-pointer with some sticker points.

The mystery of the Slaughter Mountain buck lived on, and I thought maybe he was still alive. I hunted Slaughter Mountain the next season and never saw any sign of the big buck. Either the buck Terry killed was him, or he died of old age like so many mountain bucks do. If anyone had killed this big buck, I think we would have surely heard about it.

Since I hadn’t been lucky enough to kill this monarch of Slaughter Mountain, I asked my cousin, Janet Bradley-Harkins, to draw me a picture of how this buck may have looked. I gave her the mounted antlers, and she produced a very realistic representation of the Slaughter Mountain mystery buck.

Artist rendition of the Slaughter Mountain Mystery Buck by Janet Bradley-Harkins, who is the author’s cousin.