NC Hunter Tags 203 3/8-Inch Non-Typical After 5-Year Hunt
Graham Smith closed a five-year pursuit on September 13, 2026, arrowing a 9.5-year-old non-typical buck in North Carolina on the second day of the state’s deer season. According to Buckmasters, the buck posted a BTR gross of 203 3/8 inches, which ranks it No. 2 among bow-killed irregular whitetails the organization has ever scored in North Carolina.
A Deer He Watched for Five Years
The buck first showed up in 2022, already a fully mature whitetail. Smith ran into it in person several times across 2024 and 2025, every encounter falling between late October and early November. None of those sightings came together, he said. Now he’s glad they didn’t.
The Hunt
Smith killed the deer during a September heat wave. The heat index sat at 104 degrees with only a slight breeze. He was set up in a stretch of big hardwoods, with a cutover at his back and oaks on the ground in front of him.
Early in the hunt, a doe and fawn walked out ahead of his setup. Behind them came a pair of small bucks and two more does. Then, near 7:30 P.M., the buck he’d pursued for years stepped out with a smaller 8-point. Smith floated his pin over the vitals and connected on a quartering shot at 25 yards. The deer dashed off.
“I keep thinking how blessed I am to harvest an animal of this caliber in North Carolina,” Smith says. “He’s definitely a once-in-lifetime deer.”
The Rack
The non-typical rack carried 23 points and a rough B&C green tally of 191 5/8 inches. Buckmasters (BTR) scorer Wayne Cox tallied the deer in late September and measured over 183 inches of antler growth in all, according to Buckmasters. Its BTR gross of 203 3/8 inches ranks it second among the bow-killed irregular whitetails the organization has scored in the state.
For context, North Carolina’s largest B&C non-typical on record measured 228 4/8 inches — a buck Don Rockett killed in Person County in 1998.
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