Deer hunting seasons are fast approaching and one of the earliest to open is in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. A special one-day, one-buck-only season for youngsters ages 16 and under opened August 8 in Game Zones 3 & 4, and the Belue family of Chesnee, South Carolina, was ready for it.
They hunted on a private 2,200-acre hunt club in Allendale County, with two Belue boys each hunting with one of their parents in separate blinds. They got into those blinds overlooking food sources at about 5 p.m. on the hot and muggy afternoon of August 8.
Cory Belue went with his young 7-year-old son Zayn, while Ashley hunted with their son Walker, age 13.
“We’d settled into our box stand for only about 10 minutes when we heard turkeys calling in the woods,” 41-year-old Cory tells Outdoor Life. “About 15 minutes later we saw our first buck – a 10-pointer – that stepped out into the open about 100 yards away.”
Cory says soon six more bucks emerged from the cover, plus one doe, all about 100 yards away from the father and son in their elevated stand.
“One of the bucks had shed its red summer coat and was in its gray winter coat, and that’s the buck Zayn wanted,” says Cory, who works in his family trucking business. “He had a scoped Remington Model Seven rifle in .260 Remington rested on a tripod in our blind, and put the crosshairs on the deer’s chest.”
Because there were so many deer milling about, Zayn waited anxiously for the buck he wanted to clear the other deer.
“He was shaking bad, but when the buck offered an opening, he pulled the trigger and sent a 120-grain Barnes TTSX bullet perfectly behind the deer’s shoulder,” says Cory. “It buckled, ran, and fell just a short distance away.”
Zayn’s main-frame 8-point velvet buck later weighed 190 pounds (not field dressed) back at their hunt camp. It had an outside antler spread of 19 inches, and an inside spread of 15.5 inches.
Meanwhile, in another box blind nearly one mile away, Ashley and Walker heard Zayn’s rifle shot, and found out the 7-year-old had taken a nice buck.
“Walker was getting nervous, and a little impatient when he heard Zayn had taken a buck,” says Ashley. “We sat for about 30 minutes and four does stepped out about 150 yards from our blind. Then another five or six deer came out. Finally, a buck came into view but a doe started blowing and getting nervous – so all the deer spooked and ran away.”
Walker was disappointed, because one of the bucks was a nice 6-pointer that he wanted. But at 8 p.m. a couple does stepped into view. Then two bucks appeared – none of which were in the group of whitetails that had spooked previously.
One of the bucks was a bigger 8-pointer and Walker said to Ashley, “Mom, I’m gonna take that one.”
Walker put the crosshairs of his .308 rifle on the buck’s shoulder and sent a 150-grain Barnes bullet through the buck.
“I knew I hit him perfectly, because he buckled,” says Walker. “But he ran into the woods and we couldn’t find a blood trail.”
The hunters called a nearby friend who was hunting with his son and they had a drone, which they used to find Walker’s buck. As it turned out, the deer had run only 100 yards.
“The drone found his buck in less than one minute of searching,” Cory says. “Walker’s buck weighed 216 pounds, with a 20-inch outside spread of velvet antlers.”
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Both bucks will be mounted by a taxidermist for the young hunters, and they plan to hang their deer heads in their bedrooms of a new house the family is building.
“I’m not much of a hunter,” says Ashley. “But just being with my sons doing what they love to do is all that matters to me.”
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