A 195-inch buck isn’t something you run into every day. Many hunters may never see a buck of that caliber in their lifetime. It’s no surprise that when someone claims to have killed a buck of that size with 17-points that the news is met with skepticism.
Recently killed in Georgia, this massive buck is more than just a rumor, it’s the real deal. The buck was shot in Worth County by Shannon Sledge on Wednesday.
Shannon and his friend Roger “Skippy” White Jr., had seen the buck for the last three years on his dairy farm but never got a shot at him.
“He hunted that deer for three years and never saw him while hunting him in the daylight, never got a daylight picture,“ Shannon said. “This was right here on our dairy. We only have maybe 25 acres of woods on the farm, and that little head where the buck lived was maybe 10 acres. I never hunt my place because I didn’t want to intrude on his hunting. Hunting there was just like a fringe benefit for him. He’s put cameras out all over, and we had said that he needed to kill the buck this year or something else was going to happen to him.”
As fate would have it, Shannon received a call from White, who said he had just seen the buck on cameras he had set up on the property.
“This was at 11 o’clock,” said Shannon. “When I got finished with what I was doing with my work, I came back home, and he’s got the climbers ready. I said, ‘Man, it’s 1:30 in the afternoon—I can’t sit all day. I just can’t do it.”
Shannon and White worked out a plan and went looking for their massive buck. After some uncertainty of where to set up and where the deer might cross, Shannon picked a spot and set up at a big trail.
“So I get set up, and I’ve got my shotgun and my rifle,” says Shannon. “Skippy goes on up about 50 yards ahead of me, and he turns and walks in close to where we think he’s bedding up. Just like we planned, he walks in, and out comes this big son of a gun. You couldn’t have planned it any better.”
“He came straight at me, and I shot him with my rifle… I should say, I shot at him. He didn’t slow up. So I grabbed my shotgun, and I unloaded three rounds of 00 Buck. He didn’t go 50 yards.”
“It was just a crazy event. But a buck like that, we might not have ever killed him hunting traditionally.”
“I always called it Skippy’s deer,” Shannon said. “I felt bad. I hated that I killed it, but he was happy for me. He really was.”
