Outdoors: Merely trying to provide food for his family, Galivants Ferry man lands potential record buck

With Thanksgiving approaching, Koss LeGette was simply looking for a diversion from his busy life and to put meat on his family’s table when he ventured into the woods near Galivants Ferry on Nov. 23.

LeGette, a Galivants Ferry native and 2001 graduate of Aynor High School, is owner of Goliath Gun Dogs and pastor at Galivants Ferry Baptist Church. LeGette and his wife Jessica – an avid deer hunter herself – have a growing family, which puts more demand on his time.

After about a four-year hiatus from pursuing white-tailed deer, LeGette decided to spend some time alone with nature.

“I needed to get away from all this, so I went to get in the tree stand,” said LeGette, who was on his second hunting trip of the fall on the 10-plus acre family farm located a couple miles from his home just east of the Little Pee Dee River.

LeGette was in a tripod stand, overlooking a corn pile and observing a pair of does partaking of the food he provided. Around 5:30 p.m., a buck appeared to his right in the dim light, about 30-40 yards away from LeGette’s position in the stand.

“He was feeding on briars and dog fennel,’’ said LeGette. “He had been bedding there the whole time and he got up. He had no interest in the does – he was about 60-70 yards away from the corn pile.”

Aided by a near full moon, LeGette took aim and got a good shot on the buck with his Browning 25-06.

“I shot him and watched as he ran across a cutdown into some dog fennel,” LeGette said. “He appeared in the dog fennel and I used a second shot to finish him.”

When he got a closer look, LeGette was surprised by the buck’s rack. He had harvested a 10-point buck – certainly a rarity in Horry County – with an additional horn growing from the base of the antlers.

“That’s a lifetime deer for Horry County, and for me especially,” said LeGette, who noted the buck weighed 189 pounds and surmised it would have weighed 210 in full rut. “I’m a meat hunter. We just enjoy eating deer meat and eating off the land.”

LeGette had the antlers preliminarily measured by Stuart Johnston of Wildlife Creations in Conway and the results bode well for his place in the South Carolina white-tailed deer Antler Records Program.

The measurements, using the Boone & Crockett scoring system, were 163 1/2 gross and 153 5/8 after deductions.

The highest-scoring buck harvested in Horry County in the state Antler Records Program is the 150 3/8-inch typical buck taken by Eric Branton on Oct. 28, 2009, which is tied for 190th in the All-Time South Carolina Typical records.

The deer’s antlers still must go through the required 60-day drying period before they can be scored officially, but LeGette very well could have harvested the highest-scoring buck ever recorded in South Carolina’s largest county.

While LeGette is excited about the potential county record buck, his deer-hunting goal remains the same.

“We don’t do it for the glory of the horns, we do it for the daily meat,” LeGette said. “We ate the backstrap the night I shot him. I don’t go for a trophy buck, I go to get away from the craziness of life and to have deer meat in the fridge and freezer.”

This story was originally published December 4, 2015 at 6:13 PM with the headline "Outdoors: Merely trying to provide food for his family, Galivants Ferry man lands potential record buck."