Troup Trophy Takes 1990 Truck-Buck Week 2

Harvesting a deer with a bow is not an easy task. The limiting factors that archers face range from, first, just practicing enough to be proficient with a stick and string, to having to wait for that close-in, clear shot. It’s just a different ball game than hunting with a high-powered rifle.

But for all the obstacles that bowhunters must overcome, there are some real advantages to archery hunting.

Ricky Joe Bishop capitalized on one of those advantages two weeks ago to take what may be recognized as a Pope & Young buck, Ricky Joe was “driving to the rodeo” this summer, when, inside the city limits of LaGrange in Troup County, he saw two bucks standing in a field. Ricky Joe, an experienced hunter from Manchester who has taken several bucks with a gun in the 140 B&C range, knew the velvet bucks were good ones. He did some leg work and found the owner of the property and received permission to hunt the 50-acre tract but only with a bow.

The land consisted of an abandoned house, 40 acres of hardwoods, 10 acres of pasture and a couple acres of kudzu.

After hunting from a stand in the hardwoods for most of the evening on Sept. 25, Ricky Joe decided to climb down and sneak over to a pasture, hoping to slip up on a deer feeding out in the open. He still hunted slowly to the pasture, but when he got there, there were no deer, so headed toward the house. The kudzu patch bordered the house, along with a thicket of bushes and overgrown weeds.

“I stalked up behind the house,” Ricky Joe said, “and I saw a tree shaking in the bushes about 30 yards away.”

It was a pear tree, and a buck was trying to get at the fruit. Ricky Joe was standing just about at the back door of the house, and the buck began to ease closer. When the buck was 23 steps away, Ricky Joe shot.

The arrow, propelled by Ricky Joe’s 85-lb. pull High Country Sniper bow, dropped the buck 60 yards away.

The first thing I noticed when Ricky Joe brought the deer to GON to be scored was a point on the right antler. The point could be scored two ways, as an abnormal point arising from the G2 point, or as the G2 point itself. And depending on which green score you were looking at, Ricky Joe’s Troup County buck either scored a respectable 120 6/8 points or a record-book-qualifying 134 5/8 points.

We decided to take the higher score, but Ricky Joe’s buck would have won Truck-Buck II either way. After the 60-day drying period, Ricky Joe plans to have the rack officially scored, and only then will we know for sure whether Troup County has produced its record-breaking fourth Pope & Young buck.

A 50-acre tract in Troup County produced this buck for Ricky Joe Bishop.