Hunter: Jeff Grizzle
Points: 10 (5L, 5R)
County: Franklin
Season: 2022-2023
Hunt Story
I first saw this buck on trail cams at food plots when it was about 2 1/2 years old. I've been watching him grow for about 3 years, but the deer would never daylight during hunting season. After running several trail cams at different stands, this particular stand was the only daylight picture that I had of this deer. So, I chose to hunt this hang-on stand overlooking a small food plot at a creek bottom. At daylight, I heard a deer grunting in planted pines adjacent to the stand. I did a slight grunt to draw this deer out of the pines only to discover it was a small 8-point. As it started to get daylight, I heard a loud clash of antlers on the cut-over ridge to my left. It sounded like bulldozers going through the cutover for the next 20 to 30 minutes accompanied by several different grunts from the area. I then heard deer running in the oaks directly behind me. I turned to see three does running the oak ridge behind me coming from the direction of the fight. Then, directly in front of me, I saw a small spike start into the food plot. As he got a few feet into the food plot, he suddenly turned and ran back in the direction he came from. Still hearing different grunts on the cutover ridge to my left, I turned to my right to see a doe coming directly toward me from the food plot. I got my gun up and ready only to see it was a small 6-point chasing the doe. As they came under my stand, I saw movement to the left of the food plot where I had bush-hogged a road through the cutover. As I got my gun up on the deer while he was coming through the hedgerows, I could see that it was the 10-point that I had been watching for the past several years on the trail cameras. As it cleared the hedgerows, I got the crosshairs fixed behind the right shoulder of the deer and with a squeeze of the trigger, the Weatherby 300 put the 10-pointer on the ground.
