Buck Tramples WMA Rabbit Hunter

Thornton Hull, 75, of Locust Grove, spent Christmas in a cast after a bizarre incident at B.F. Grant WMA in early December.

On Thursday, December 8, Thornton, his cousin Norman McCullough, 72, and Charles Moore, 66, both from Conyers, went for a rabbit hunt at the Putnam County public tract. The three men were walking up a woods road, waiting for the beagles to jump a rabbit when a big, whitetail buck — at least an 8-pointer according to the men — ran over Thornton, breaking a bone in his lower leg, just above his ankle.

“You think about snakes, abandoned wells, and stumpholes,” Thornton said. “You don’t think about deer.

B.F. Grant WMA in 2005.

“We were in some thinned woods with some pretty high briars, and I could hear the deer coming,” Thornton said. “All of a sudden I saw nothing but head and horns.

“I don’t know what the deer’s intentions were, but I would have thought the deer would avoid me,” Thornton commented.

When the deer crashed through the briars, Thornton tried to fall to the ground, thinking the deer would jump right over him. However, the deer struck him. Thornton said there was a rip in his coat that he surmised was from the deer’s antler getting tangled in it.

“I’m lucky because I know how it could have turned out,” Thornton said. “If it would have hit me broadside it would have probably killed me.”

Thornton was wearing a brand-new, leather, wide-brimmed hat on the hunt. Norman and Charles joked with him that the buck was trying to steal his new hat.

“If he wanted my hat that bad, I’d have just handed it to him,” Thornton cracked. “They said the deer came trotting by them kind of slow, and I told them he was probably checking out their headgear to see if he wanted to take it.”