Super Tall 11-Point Should Set Hancock County Bow Record

A tall-tined buck with a symmetrical rack should set a new Hancock County record as the best ever taken with a bow. And that’s saying something special coming out of one of the Piedmont Region’s top big-buck counties.

The buck was taken on opening day of gun season by Dalton Trammell, who decided this season to get serious about trying to kill a big buck with his bow.

Dalton Trammell’s 11-point bow-buck killed on opening day of gun season should set a new Hancock County record. It’s been unofficially green scored at around 167 total inches and should net close to 160.

“I’ve killed some pretty good deer with a rifle, and about three years ago I started focusing more on getting one with my bow,” Dalton said. “This year I planned to stick with a bow—I’d never killed a buck with my bow.”

Dalton is a college student in Macon at Mercer University School of Law, and he is originally from Luthersville in Meriwether County,

On the evening of opening day of gun season, Oct. 17, Dalton was hunting in a creek bottom along a scrape line. The buck came in at around 5:30 p.m. and was working the scrapes. Dalton got a 22-yard shot.

Dalton was hunting the property of a college friend’s father. Hancock County is a QDM county, where no buck is legal unless it has at least 4 points on one side of its rack, but this tract of land is managed much more intensively.

Property owner Andrew Jones said, “This is the third 150-inch plus deer we have killed. If you shoot the small ones, you won’t have any big ones. I truly believe Georgia can produce deer equal to those in the Midwest. It just takes trigger control. As I tell the folks who hunt with us, ‘Not every 120-inch deer you pass on will grow into a 150-inch deer, but he sure as heck won’t if he’s dead.'”

Dalton Trammell with his Hancock County bow buck taken on Oct. 16, which ironically was the opening day of the 2020 firearms season.

The 11-point buck is a main-frame 5×5 with one small sticker point. Taxidermist Darrell Dickens in Cartersville put a tape on the rack and came up with about 167 total inches, and he said it could net close to the 160-inch mark as a typical.

“One of the tines is longer than 13 inches, and it has great mass,” Darrell said.

The current Hancock County record buck with a bow is Doug Wolfe’s 2003 deer that netted 136 2/8 typical.

UPDATE: Dalton Trammell’s buck was officially scored at 156 7/8 typical, setting the new Hancock County record for a buck taken by a bowhunter.

Hancock County All-Time Bowhunting Records

Hancock County All-Time Records