Hunter kills 180-class buck on small tract in middle of Black Prairie WMA

MS-Sportsman.com user Neil Waggoner downed this 18-point buck, which has green scored at 181 inches, while hunting land adjacent to Black Prairie WMA.

18-point was chasing doe, hunter says.

Neil Waggoner and his family live on 40 acres he grew up loving, a familiar tract of gently rolling hills and a 10-acre lake surrounded by the Black Prairie Wildlife Management Area in Lowndes County.

For the last few weeks, Waggoner had been using his three tracking dogs to help other hunters. He also missed an 8-point buck that rattled him.

“Buck fever or I looked up or something, I guess,” Waggoner said.

A few days later on Dec. 18, amid an orange sunset casting enough light to make a set of antlers glow, Waggoner knew the big buck in the edge of the field was a good one.

“I just kept telling myself to stay calm and make a good shot,” he said. “At that time, all I could see was the left side of his head, but I knew he definitely was a good one.”

After two broadside shots with his .270 – one through each shoulder – and seeing the mass of antler on the right side, Waggoner’s heart skipped a beat when the buck ran out of the field following a doe.

“I only saw his left side when he stepped out of the cedar thicket,” said Waggoner, who goes by “nwaggoner” on the MS-Sportsman.com forum. “He had a doe with him, and when she came out she was looking at something, maybe some other deer. Whatever it was, she didn’t like it and walked about 100 yards toward me. He stepped out and followed her exact path.”

Waggoner battled to get the crosshairs on the big buck, and finally had his shot.

“I could feel my heart beating through my coat,” he said. “When he turned broadside, I took the shot behind his shoulder. The first shot didn’t faze him.”

The frantic hunter couldn’t believe it, but worked to send another shot down range.

“He ran about 20 yards and turned around broadside the other way, and then I shucked a shell,” Waggoner said. “I put another one in his right shoulder, and then they ran about 100 yards.”

Waggoner said when he worked the second cartridge into the gun, the deer became more spooky. The first shot didn’t seem to faze either one of them. After the second one, they took off, and he heard the buck go down in the cedar thicket.

All he knew was the buck had a great rack. What he didn’t know until he found it a little later was the 200-pounder had 18 points and would rough score about 181 inches on the Boone & Crockett system.

“I heard it crash in the thicket and waited,” Waggoner said. “My wife heard the shots and sent me a text message, and I told her I shot a big one. I went back to get my tracking dogs and my family came with me, and the dogs led me right to him.”

The buck’s left antler has a split main beam, and the right side is a bit non-typical. It has a knobby hole from a bot fly, along with a gnarled mess “like the roots of a tree,” he said, instead of a brow tine. The other brow is split with a kicker point.

The bases, Waggoner said, “are like big Coke cans.”

See another photo of the buck in the Nikon Big Buck Photo Contest forum.

Waggoner didn’t have any idea the big buck was roaming his property, but a neighbor did.

“I’d never seen it before,” Waggoner said. “But one of my neighbors has trail-cam photos of him. He told me the next day he hoped I slept well because he’d been getting pictures of him for more than a year. He lives about a mile away, so this buck had been moving around.”

Waggoner said the deer in his area – about halfway between Macon and Columbus – are still showing signs of rutting activity.

“He was trailing that doe step for step,” he explained. “I think the rut’s winding down, but they obviously were together. One of my buddies said he saw three shooter bucks within 100 yards of each other the week before, and all of them were chasing does, too.

“But he wasn’t grunting, running or nothing. They weren’t in any hurry. Usually you’ll see them running around, but they were just taking their time.”

Waggoner plans to have the buck officially scored and mounted. He said the other bucks he has mounted in his home “are probably 125, at the most.”

“I told a buddy I might have to quit hunting because this one will be tough to beat,” he said. “This buck will be the measuring stick before I pull the trigger on anything else.

“I guess maybe that’s good for my kids when they start hunting, though.”

See other bucks killed this season – and add photos of your own – in the Nikon Big Buck Photo Contest, which is free to all registered users of this site.

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