October 2003 North Carolina Rifle Hunt

In 2003, I was living in North Carolina. A friend and I applied for a controlled deer hunt at the Pee Dee National Wildlife refuge. We got drawn for the first rifle hunt, which occurred in late October. The rut in the is area is typically peaking around the first week of December, so October can be a tough time to hunt.

The refuge covers 8443 acres, so I wanted to prescout in any way possible. It was about a two hour drive from where I was living, so I was only able to look around once before the hunt. But I spent hours scouring aerial photos and topographical maps. I own MapTech's Terrain Navigator Professional for North Carolina, and it really came in handy. It is an expensive piece of software, and it is worth the money. It really helps for remote scouting. Visit www.maptech.com for more information. You can get aerial photos and topographical maps for free at http://terraserver.microsoft.com also. It is not quite as handy as the MapTech software, but it is free.

I identified a couple of potential spots, looking for funnels and areas far from parking lots. We hunted October 30 and 31. I brought my .270. The first day morning I sat in a funnel between an open crop field and a beaver pond. I had deer approach from behind, and I didn't notice them until it was too late. I heard them, but they spotted me as I tried to turn around. There were three that I could see, and I couldn't tell if any were bucks. That afternoon, we hunted some small pieces of woods near larger crop fields and jumped a few does. We could shoot does, but were not that interested in them.

The second morning I walked a long way to an inside corner of a fenced cow pasture. The cow pasture was bordered on one side by a no-hunting zone at this corner. Also at this corner was an edge between pine forest and some mixed pines/hardwoods that had been logged out a few year back. There was a trail (fire trail or loggin road) along the edge. I sat just off the trail where I could see down the trail both directions. To my left about 70 yards down the trail was the no-hunting zone. I had very limited visibility, so I knew that if I saw a deer I would have to shoot quickly. It wasn't the best setup, but the area was beautiful so I couldn't resist sitting down and relaxing.

About 7:30AM I looked to my left and spotted movement. To my surprise it was a deer. It was in the no-hunting zone. Then I spotted its head and saw it was a buck. I pulled up and waited to see if it would come out of the no-hunting zone and step onto the trail. It did and sent a ballistic silvertip on its way. The buck kicked and ran as fast as he could. Fortunately, he ran in front of me through the pines. There was a lot of undergrowth below the pines, making him really difficult to see. But I heard him running, and then the noise stopped almost directly in front of me. I walked into the pines and looked around for him. It took me about 5 minutes to find him. If he had run the other way into the no-hunting zone, I am not sure if I would have found him. He was bleeding, but he was running so fast it would have been really difficult to find the trail.

But I found him and he was a pretty nice little 6 pointer. Two and a half years old I figure. He would have been really nice had he lived a couple more years. But I was happy with him as he was. It was a long drag out to the truck, with much of it uphill. There is a picture in this post.
I have some more pictures, but they didn't turn out very well. I might clean them up and post them later.

In my opinion, controlled hunts like national wildlife refuge hunts or state or city park hunts are the best deal going for deer hunters. Beautiful land with limited hunting pressure, often managed for big bucks. What more could you ask for? It might take several years of applying to get drawn, but it only takes a couple of minutes to apply. If you have never tried any of these kind of hunts, you are seriously missing out. It is the next best thing to having access to good private land. In some ways it is even better.