Bradly Hammill wasn’t after a monster buck when he stepped into his Claiborne County stand the day after Thanksgiving. Well, maybe he was, but he had no idea a 170-inch buck would show up that afternoon.
“A couple of people him on cameras, but I didn’t find out about that until after I killed it,” said Hammill, who goes by “BradlyH12” on the MS-Sportsman.com reports forum. “I didn’t know he was there.”
Hammill was in his stand, which overlooks the edge of a big cutover inside the woods, by about 3 p.m. and for the first 1 ½ hours there was no activity.
That changed quickly when two does ran out of the thicket.
“I spotted a doe pop out of the cutover, and then (the buck) came running after the other doe,” Hammill said.
All the hunter could see was a big set of antlers 70 yards away.
“All I knew was that he had 10- to 12-inch G2s and G3s,” he said. “I just knew he was a good buck.”
The club mandates bucks must carry at least 17-inch main beams before being harvested, and this deer topped that easily.
But it at first looked like Hammill might not even get a shot.
“The does ran back into the thicket,” he said.
But the excited Hammill wasn’t prepared to just watch the buck follow the does.
“I rattled, and he came running,” he explained. “He came charging right to me.”
So Hammill quickly grabbed his .45-70, and blasted the deer at only 30 yards. The buck ran away, and Hammill sat back to wait.
“I waited until it got pitch black, and then I went back to the camp to wait for my dad,” he said.
The time alone yielded no further clues to the size of the deer’s antlers.
“When my dad got there, I just told him I had killed a big buck,” Hammill said. “I told him, ‘I shot a stud.’
“I just didn’t know how big he was.”
The pair headed back to the stand site, and found the deer laying only 50 to 60 yards away in a switch-cane thicket.
“I saw a big old set of horns laying there with points sticking everywhere,” Hammill said.
As soon as he and his father caught their collective breath, they began celebrating.
“That’s when we went to hollering,” Hammill laughed. “We woke up the whole woods.”
The buck weighed 205 pounds, and was estimated to be only 4 years old. But the rack atop its head was truly impressive, with six points on the left side and five on the right.
“The inside spread was 16 inches,” Hammill explained. “He’s not real wide, but the tines are tall.”
The rack has been green scored at 173 inches Boone & Crockett.
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