November 3rd, 1987. I was 18 years old. I was invited on a dog hunt at Lee’s Bay hunting club between Homerville, Ga. and Fargo, Ga. The hunting club was on the edge of the Okefenokee N.W.R. According to the thermometer at the club house it was 76 degrees at 12:30pm, which was our lunch break. The morning drives had produced a bunch of deer sightings but no kills. We hit a big block of young pines not far from the camphouse at about 1:30. I was fairly new to dog hunting so I hunted with my only shotgun, an 1100 that only shot 2 3/4” shells through a modified choke. I was told to sit out in a fresh cutover about 100yds from the road near all the trucks. I was about 50yds from the pine thicket. I heard the driver straight in front of me not too far in the pine thicket encouraging the walker hounds by yelling, “whooo-weee! Get’em up!!” He did this not stop from the dirt road all the way through the pine thicket. I was already told that there had been a good buck that ran out of thicket the weekend before and ran along the treeline then crossed the road at the trucks. Thats why I had that stand, just in case he did it again. I never heard the dogs jump, instead all 5 walkers ran out of the thicket one at a time. The first four came out in the cutover, saw me and ran to me for petting. I looked up and saw the last dog come out running towards me. Right behind that dog a racked buck trotted out of the thicket and immediately turned left and started trotting down the edge of the cut. I stood, raised my trusty dove gun and shot a load of number 1 buckshot at him. He dropped in his tracks. I had placed my bead on the top of his nose and put one buckshot in the corner of his eye and a few more in his neck. My legs and arms were shaking so bad I had to sit down. The driver came out of the thicket hollering, “Did you hit him?” I just pointed in the direction of the buck. He said, “you busted his ass young man!” He called me over to the buck and we high fived. He said it was an old swamp buck, a 7pt. I still have those plaque mounted antlers. They’re still dark chocolate and still have shreads of pine tree stuck to the bases from rubbing. I have killed a couple of hundred deer since that day and several bucks much larger. But that buck will always be my number 1 deer hunting memory.
