Whenever Wayne Cox heads home to North Carolina after deer hunting in Kansas, he has fewer blank scoresheets in his measuring kit. The ones with numbers penciled on them almost never carry his name, however.
That wasn’t the case in 2017, when the biggest rack the veteran BTR measurer taped wore his own nonresident tag.
One of the most active antler measurers on the East Coast, Wayne is the BTR’s regional director for the Carolinas and Virginia. As such, he’s held some of the planet’s largest whitetail antlers. The “semi-retired” contractor from Lenoir, N.C., has made the long drive to Marshall County, Kansas, for eight years in hopes of tagging his own giant.
He finally found the Holy Grail on his most recent trip, when a wisely calculated change of plans put him in the right place at the right time.
While Wayne was understandably open to any encounter with a Sunflower State behemoth, a particular buck was on his mind. He’d seen it in 2016, when it wore a clean 12-point rack.
A good friend suggested he save the stand nearest the sighting to his phone’s Scoutlook app so he could check weather conditions whenever he wanted. And Wayne did just that.
Also in 2016, his friend heard antlers rattling while he was greasing a combine. Convinced a hunter had slipped onto his property, he got in his truck and drove toward the noise with a chip on his shoulder.
As soon as he topped a hill, he saw four bucks fighting, two of which were giants. The whitetails ran into a little island of trees completely surrounded by agricultural fields.
“They call it the Tree Lot because it was planted by the CC boys,” Wayne said.
CC boys is a reference to the Civilian Conservation Corps established by the U.S. Congress in 1933, a relief program for unmarried men between the ages of 18 and 25. The group was also called the Tree Army because they planted trees to combat soil erosion.
When Wayne walked the perimeter of the tree lot, he discovered buck sign encircled the island. He also jumped this buck, which ran half a mile over open ground to reach another woodlot.
“The buck’s rack was full of points,” he said. “I counted five up, not counting the main beam.”
He named the buck T-12, for typical 12-pointer.
On the fateful day, Wayne began hunting at a different property. When the wind shifted, he consulted his phone app and decided to spend the afternoon at the Tree Lot.
At 4:30, he heard something and turned to see T-12 just 40 yards behind him.
As soon as there was a clear path from crossbow to deer, Wayne let the air out of the buck. And he and his friend found the new state record (crossbow-typical) the following day.
Its BTR score is 192 2/8 inches.
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