A bit before dawn, Wyatt Grimmelt and his dad, Tony, had been delivered to their stand along a logging road through a cut over forest by a swamp close to the Edisto River. They were hunting out of Deerfield Plantation, Hugh Walters’ hunting lodge in St. George, S.C. This was Tony’s fourth trip down from their home on Grand Island, N.Y. and Wyatt’s first out-of-state hunt.
The day before had been a scorcher with little moving. Hugh figured they’d have a better chance in the area called “The Creek.” Their stand stood about 15 feet high against a tree next to a slight bend in the road. It was a perfect spot for a young man and his dad. Hunters faced up the road which extended behind them over their left shoulders, hence its name: The Lefty Backward Stand.
Deep grey clouds were moving in from the southeast. At first, they drizzled faintly and intermittently, but within an hour the released steady light rain. I was sitting on tripod stand near Wyatt and Tony, sheltering best I could under the bill of my ball cap and kicking myself for leaving my waterproof camo coat in the car. Shortly after the first drops fell, I heard a single shot not too far away. About 20 minutes later, another came from the same direction and distance.
About 11 o’clock, guide Cody Davis arrived in his crew-cab pickup, collected me, and we headed down the road toward Wyatt and Tony’s stand. Hearing the truck, they’d climbed down. “I got a doe and a buck,” Wyatt shouted as soon as our doors opened. “She’s up there,” he pointed in the direction we came from, “and he’s down there,” he said gesturing in the opposite direction.
We spread out stepping carefully through the shoulder-high brush, still thick with summer’s waxy green leaves. Wyatt was convinced he’d made a heart-lung shot, but we could see no tracking blood. We’d been poking around in a semi-circle for half an hour or so when Wyatt saw a patch of fur among the weeds and called: “She’s over here.” He’d nailed her just where he said he had, behind the shoulder. In similar fashion, 45 minutes later, after seeing the tip of antlers under a bush, he led us to the buck he’d downed with a similar shot.
For Wyatt the hunt had unfolded like this:
“We were sitting in the stand. And I learned a lot that day.
“A turkey came out, and my dad told me to stay quiet because the deer will come out because they feel safe when there’s turkey. And then a doe came out, and I shot her. She was no more than 50 yards.
“And I turned around to make sure there was nothing behind me, and turned around again and there was an 8-point standing there. I didn’t know he was an 8-point at the time. I had to get down on my knees to get a shot.”
The last evening of his hunt he killed a 175-pound hog, again with a single shot. If Wyatt sounds like an experienced rifleman, he’s been shooting for as long as he can remember.
He’d come to Deerfield hoping to take a trophy. He returned home with three, but if you ask him the best part of the hunt, he’ll tell you: “Spending time with my dad.”
For more information about hunting on Deerfield Plantation, contact: www.deerfieldplantationsc.com
Deerfield Plantation is one of more than 50 great places to hunt and fish that Ross profiles in Sporting Classics’ new book Classic Sporting Lodges to be released in May, just in time to arrange trips for fall.