ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, October 7, 1996 TAG: 9610080002
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
Maybe one of the best ways to kill a trophy buck is not to do much serious hunting at all.
That worked for Jimmy Dedmond on the opening day of the rifle season last year.
From Farmville, Dedmond, a 35-year-old carpenter, arrived at his Cumberland County hunting area before daylight, then split off from his dad and father-in-law, who were his hunting partners. He spent most of his time still-hunting, a technique that involves moving snail-like through deer cover and pausing often to look and listen with gun held ready.
``I have to be on the ground,'' he said. ``I can't sit in a tree. It is hard for me to be still three or four hours. It is just stop and go, more or less, for me. You are scouting while you are hunting.''
The pace depends on how you feel, Dedmond said. ``If you get hungry, you get up and you go to the store and get you something to eat,'' he said.
Even this technique began to wear thin for Dedmond about midafternoon. So he stopped along the edge of a field, where there were buck scrapings, and took a break.
``I was kind of tired,'' he said. ``I had been walking around. So I laid down and had a log as a pillow. I was kind of watching that area, thinking a deer might come down.''
Dedmond had leaned his 12-gauge shotgun against a tree before reclining. He was fighting to keep his eyes open, when he heard something behind him. He rolled on his elbow to take a look.''
The noise had been made by a buck stomping its front foot.
``He was trying to make me move to figure out what I was,'' said Dedmond. ``Once I rolled over, he'd seen enough. He made a break to run and I made a break to get my gun. I got one shot at him.''
It was a fine buck, an opening day dream-maker.
``If I had to guess, I'd say 12 points,'' said Dedmond. ``It was wide and tall.''
And it was gone.
Dedmond began tracking the buck, following it to a railroad track, where all signs disappeared. He later would jokingly tell his father, ``I believe it got on the train.''
When he did some backtracking and circling, Dedmond reached an old homesite amid a cut-over that had been planted in pines. There was little more than an imprint left in the new generation of pines, a tumbled rock chimney, a pile of trash, a crumbling hog lot, a tangle of briers where children once ran wild.
Dedmond was examining the ground for signs of the buck he'd encountered when he looked up and his eyes locked onto the eyes of an even more impressive animal. It was standing in the opening of the homesite watching him.
``He was a perfect shot, 45 steps,'' Dedmond said.
There was little time for heavy thinking or for counting points or - even - for getting nervous. Dedmond instinctively shouldered his shotgun and fired. The buck took off.
``I got nervous then,'' he said. ``I thought I had two that had gotten away from me. But there was no doubt I'd hit him.''
The buck ran 100 yards then fell, a fatal wound in its shoulder. When Dedmond reached it, a rough count revealed more than 20 points.
At the recent Virginia Big Game Trophy Show, sponsored by the Rockingham-Harrisonburg Chapter of the Izaak Walton League and the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries near Harrisonburg, the 23-point deer scored 236 1/16, the biggest in the show. Under the national Boone and Crockett measuring system, the nontypical rack scored 213 3/8.
Only three-sixteenths of an inch behind Dedmond's buck in the Virginia competition was a 12-point, typical buck killed in Henry County by 23-year-old Tony Meade, a textile worker from Spencer. It was taken during the early muzzleloading season.
There were similarities in the two kills. Meade, like Dedmond, was near a cut-over, this one hardwoods rather than pines. And he was still-hunting.
It was Monday of the second week of muzzleloading season. At daylight, Meade had left his hunting partner a few hundred yards away.
About 9:15 a.m., Meade heard a shot, then another, in the direction of his partner. So he started to head that way.
``I actually was going with the idea of helping him drag something out,'' Meade said. But Meade was in no hurry. He would still-hunt along the way.
``I was standing on the top of a ridge looking into a hollow when I saw a buck coming down the hollow. The first part I saw of him was the antlers. He was coming angled toward me. He was chasing a doe. He walked within about 60 yards. The doe was probably 15 yards in front of him.''
Later, Meade would learn his partner had missed the doe and was reloading his black-powder gun when the buck approached. He missed him, too.
``He'd kill me if I told you his name,'' Meade said.
``I had been hunting that deer for three years,'' Meade said. In previous years, he had spotted it during the gun season and the bow season, but he'd never been in position for a shot.
This time, Meade raised his .50-caliber Thompson/Center percussion gun and fired a buffalo bullet into its shoulder. When the smoke from 90 grains of powder cleared Meade saw the white tail of a deer bobbing through the woods.
``I thought it was the buck,'' he said . ``I thought I had missed the deer. I couldn't see anything but smoke and a white tail going up the hill.''
Then Meade spotted the downed buck no more than 40 yards from where he shot it.
Meade and Dedmond are enthusiastic about the new season, but realize it will be tough to top last year's success.
``I have had people say, `You'll never get another one like that one,''' Dedmond said. ``I hate to think of it that way, but it probably is true.''
A week after Dedmond got his 23-pointer, he killed a 20-pointer in the same clearing. There is no doubt about where he will be opening day.
LENGTH: Long : 106 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: BILL COCHRAN. 1. Jimmy Dedmond's 23-point buck (left),by CNBtaken on opening day of the gun season, was the state's best last
season. 2. It beat Tony Meade's 12-point muzzleloading kill (right)
by 3/16ths of an inch. color.