Big Deer Blog

On August 20, 12-year-old Tanner Herndon killed this 240-pound, 140-class giant in Dorchester County. Read the full story here. Taxidermist Dan Pernell of Summerville is doing the mounting, and he believes this buck will easily be one of the best killed in South Carolina this year, in terms of body weight and antler. Having just hunted a few miles from where Tanner shot his giant with a .243, I have some thoughts: Tanner shot his buck in a field of low, green peanuts. You hunt some unusual food sources in the Lowcountry. One evening Krista and I hunted in a cotton field adjacent to a peanut field. “I didn’t know deer would eat cotton,” I said into the camera. “Weird.” [...]

  Still August and we have our first big deer on the ground! My hunting buddy Krista, who stared leukemia in the face and beat it, shot this bruiser the other night. When I saw him stroll out into the food plot in the fading light, I knew he was at least 5 years old. The guy who manages the plantation where we hunted has seen this buck for a few years, and figures he’s 6 or 7. Last year the deer’s rack had the same strong left side, and a lesser 4-point right side. This year his right side was just a huge spike, with a weird 3-inch kicker at the antler base. Injured or was that right side going [...]