It was a few days before Thanksgiving when Josh Cox returned home to Ash, North Carolina. He’d been hunting over in Virginia for a few days and hadn’t seen much. But as he pulled into his driveway, he got a notification from one of his cellular trail cams on his friend “Bootie” Spardin’s Virginia farm. He saw a photo of a bruiser buck chasing a doe near his hunting spot, which was now four hours away.
“I knew I had to go right back to Virginia, and I wanted to easily break it to my wife, Ariella,” Cox tells Outdoor Life. “So, I took her to dinner.”
After sweet-talking Ariella over a nice meal, she finally told him to just go back to Bootie’s farm and hunt the buck. They both knew he’d be thinking about it forever if he didn’t get back to Virginia.
“I left the next morning, driving four hours to Bootie’s, and got in the woods,” he says of the drive back to Albemarle County. “Late that Tuesday afternoon I saw the big buck, but he was dogging a doe … and I couldn’t get on him for a clean shot.”
The next day was warm without much deer activity. But on Wednesday night, the weather turned cold, dropping 30 degrees with a 15 mph wind.
“I got up that morning, which was Thanksgiving, and while I was getting dressed my cell phone pinged.”
The photos showed the buck running does in the night, near where Cox had already planned to hunt. Now he was unsure about walking into the area for fear of bumping the buck.
“Bootie suggested I drive to the spot and sit in my truck until daylight, then sneak in toward the hayfield so I wouldn’t spook the buck,” Cox says. “And that’s what I did.”
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When it was light enough to see, Cox left his truck and crept toward his hunting spot.
“I was moving slowly and quietly, and when I got close to the hay field, I saw the buck chasing a doe about 150 yards from me,” Cox says. “He was only interested in her, and she never saw me.”
Kneeling, Cox brought his .270 up to shoot. But he was so excited he couldn’t get a steady sight picture of the massive buck. He stood and tried again, making sure he didn’t look at the buck’s rack but instead focused on the shot placement. And when the buck was in the open on the edge of the hayfield at 120 yards, he settled the crosshairs behind its shoulder and fired.
The buck dropped, then got up and hopped a few yards into the timber, where it fell in a shallow creek. Josh called his buddy, who helped him load the buck and take it back to his farm.
“It was an emotional day for Bootie, because he and his dad used to hunt together on Thanksgiving Day,” Cox says. “Bootie kind of lost interest in hunting on Thanksgiving after his dad passed — until we walked up on that big buck that morning. It was a great moment for both of us.”
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They estimated the buck’s live weight at around 200 pounds. The 12-point rack was also green scored using the Buckmasters scoring system at 185 2/8 inches, and it will be scored again officially after the 60-day drying period. Cox, meanwhile, had promised his wife he’d be home in North Carolina for dinner that evening, and he made it home by 5:15 p.m. — just in time for turkey.
“That was one heck of Thanksgiving to really be grateful for.”
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