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The
club that she and her husband belong to, Hawkins Creek Hunting Club in
Butler County, has a strict six point or better rule. Jean had taken
enough does this year as part of the club’s aggressive culling program
and now she was hunting a buck. All she wanted was a deer that was six
points or larger.
At
6:58 that morning, she got what she wanted. One hundred and ninety yards
away, she saw the deer coming through the woods with his nose on the
ground and moving fast. He was nearing a beaver dam and she got ready.
As he crossed into an opening, she settled her riflescope on the moving
deer, remembering to lead him slightly due to the speed at which he was
moving.
Her
shot rang out and she saw the deer go down in the heavy timber along
side the dam. She could hear the deer thrashing as he died but could not
could see his headgear nor his body. |
Jean Tillery of
Lowndesboro attributes her buck to the antler restriction on their
lease, the culling of does and their summer and winter food plots. |
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She
waited on the stand for a good long while to be sure the deer was down
for good. She had concentrated so hard on making a clean kill and
focusing on the exact spot to place her bullet that she couldn’t
remember how big his antlers were. While she was waiting for the deer to
expire, she did two things: she called her husband and she prayed that
the deer had at least six points. At 8:05, she called her brother-in-law
to tell him of her news.
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Jean harvested this
10-pointer buck that scored 153-4/8 B&C points in Butler County.
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Her
son arrived and they went to recover the deer. Jean says that she has
heard of ground shrink all of her life but what she experienced was just
the opposite. As they drew closer to the deer it got bigger and bigger,
she knew then that this was no ordinary deer. When the deer was loaded
and back at camp, he stretched the scales to two hundred pounds. A green
score of the rack totaled a net 150 B&C with an inside spread of
nineteen inches. He was a fully mature, wild, Alabama trophy whitetail–the
trophy of a lifetime.
Jean
and her husband, Walter, credit several things to the taking of this
buck. The first and |
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foremost
is the antler restrictions on their lease, the culling of does and their
summer and winter food plots. In the summer, they plant iron and clay
peas, soybeans and supply the deer with a good mineral program. While
the buck was not killed on a food plot, they also credit their use of
Bio-Logic Greenpatch mixed with wheat and oats, all of which they buy at
Quality Co-op in Greenville.
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On
March 11, the sixty-day drying period was over for the rack and it was
scored at 153-4/8 points.
Jean
is a true deer hunter through and through as is evidenced by a couple of
remarks she made. She said that as nice as it is to have harvested this
great deer, her first racked buck, although smaller, still means a lot
to her; and she can’t wait until next season because there is one out
there that is bigger than this one. |
The same buck was caught
on a game cam at the end of the 2005 deer season. |
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