Hunter takes rare weekday off, gets a 15-point

Two decades of buck management pays off in Lowndes County.

In mid-December, Burton Swoope of Belden had a gut feeling and a few days off remaining. He put those two together and drove south toward his deer camp near Columbus for a day he won’t soon forget.

“I knew the rut was on and I just decided to use a vacation day and hunt this particular Wednesday,” said Swoope, the plant manager of a concrete plant in Pontotoc.

The result: a 15-point buck that green-scored a gross of 167 5/8 and a net of 153 6/8. It is a thick and long but not particularly wide mainframe 11-point with four sticker points.

It is a brute, and the result of two decades of management on family property in the Golden Triangle area of the historically productive deer region known as the Black Belt Prairie.

“I killed him on family land outside of Columbus, where we’ve been under some type of management program for about 20 years,” Swoope said. “We started back in the early 90’s just trying to shoot 8-pointers or better. Now we try to only take fairly mature bucks, regardless of points, and a few does. It’s paid off with some really nice bucks over the years but as far as I know he’ll be the highest scoring ever killed on our land.”

Swoope’s morning in the stand offers plenty of proof that the management practices are working.

“He was actually the 10th deer I saw that morning,” Swoope said. “I was watching a decent 8-pointer chase a doe just before he stepped out. I followed the doe and 8-point in my scope through the field and into the woods. I was hoping a bigger buck might come in and run him off.

“Out of the corner of my eye I saw a doe come into the field from the woods about 150 yards away and on the opposite side of the field of where the 8-point was. She was moving away from me.”

Thinking of the possibilities of another buck following her, the hunter switched his attention to the new doe.

“I looked over towards her just as the big buck stepped out on her trail,” Swoope said. “It was definitely peak rut and he was with the doe. I think she had pretty much stopped running from him. After they came out of the woods, they were walking away from me down a line between where we had bush hogged and where we’d let the field grow up to about 6-feet high.

“There was no question at all that he was a shooter. He looked like he was more antler than deer (though he turned out to weigh 192 pounds). It only took a second to get a serious case of the shakes. I steadied as best I could and shot him quartering away at about 175 yards.”

Swoope was shooting a Remington Model 7 chambered in 7mm-08. He saw the buck jump into the tall grass and disappear.

“I didn’t see him come out of it,” he said. “I didn’t feel real good about the shot. I’m comfortable shooting out to that distance and further but I don’t know if I’ve ever gotten that shook up about shooting a deer before.

“I gave him 30 minutes, which seemed like a few hours, and then went to check for blood. I couldn’t find any. I probably looked for five minutes and started to get a sick feeling thinking I might have missed. But from the way he jumped up in the air when I shot, I was pretty sure I hit him.”

He had, and during the search, Swoope jumped the buck and a finishing shot would be needed.

“He actually got up 20 yards from me and headed for the woods,” Swoope said. “I ran after him and shot him at about 50 yards. The second hit him right behind the shoulder and he dropped into a ditch maybe 75 yards from where I first shot him.”

The first shot, which Swoope said was six inches too far to the left, eventually would have been mortal.

“I was not happy about the shot, but I was relieved that I was able to recover him,” he said. “I immediately called my wife and my Dad to tell them the news. I took photos of the buck where he fell just inside the woods and sent them to about a dozen other people. My wife and Dad were both really excited. At first my wife thought I was playing a joke on her though because the deer was so big and I wasn’t in the photo.

“My uncle and cousin were also hunting that morning and they made their way to me. We were all kind of in disbelief that we had a buck of this size on our land. I bet we stood there for half an hour just admiring the buck before we brought it in.”

The buck sported main beams of 24 and 25 inches, and the G3s were 10½ and 11 inches. As long as the main beams were — they curved almost completely back together — they were not wide, yielding an inside spread of 16 7/8 inches.

Click here to read about other big bucks killed this season.

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