Big Georgia Buck Killed By Falling Tree?

Brian Brooks lives on 10 acres in Paulding County. He’s in a club only 3 miles down the road, but he still hunts his property and runs cameras on it. He didn’t have any photos of any big bucks on his property, but his neighbor, Lloyd Cline, did have several good bucks on his cameras. However, one of the bucks had been missing, not appearing on any cameras, for about three weeks. Brian found out why.

Brian’s first opportunity to hunt was Friday, Sept. 17. He wanted to shoot a doe and took his wife’s Excalibur crossbow that morning. He was successful in bagging a doe and later took it to the skinning shed at this club to skin and quarter it before taking it to a processor in Cartersville. When he returned home, he started checking his cameras and was not getting any daytime buck pictures, so he was going to change the camera locations. Upon approaching one of his setups, something caught his attention.

“I noticed a giant tree down, it had a triple trunk,” Brooks said. “Then I saw deer legs hanging in there and I said, ‘That ain’t good.’” 

Brian climbed in there and found bones, ribs and a spine. He also found an impressive rack. Brian had a buddy with him when he went digging through the branches. 

“When I saw it, I grabbed the rack out of the branches, and I said, ‘Look at this!,’” Brian said. 

What he pulled out of the tree branches was a huge 13-point rack with tall tines and sweeping main beams. A split brow tine, a sticker point on the right G2 and an extra point on the base added to the large 10-point main frame.

Brooks estimated the rack to gross 155 to 160 inches. It was the buck that went missing from the neighbor’s cameras.

The pick-up rack that Brian Brooks found will likely make it into the top-10 list of the best-ever bucks from Paulding County, listed as a “found” deer.

The carcass was only legs and bones with no meat or hide remaining, indicating that it had been there for several weeks and been chewed away by predators or bugs. The estimated age of the carcass seemed to coincide with the timing of when Hurricane Ida came through and downed many trees. The large hardwood was likely blown over about that time, and unfortunately it seems that it fell on the buck. The only other scenario is the buck was already dead and the tree fell right on top of it, although that seems less likely.

“I never in my life thought I’d find this on my property. I am an avid hunter, and this is a giant buck for Paulding County. I’ve hunted this area for eight years and have not seen a deer of this stature, and I run 10 cameras year-round,” said Brian.

Brian plans to make a European mount out of the buck’s rack. He’ll have to clean it up first because his wife won’t let it in the house because it smells so bad. Regardless, he has a unique trophy and story about a buck that he didn’t have to use a buck tag on.  

He plans to have the deer scored as a pick-up rack and entered into GON‘s Georgia Deer Records.

Paulding County Best Bucks Of All-Time