17-Year-Old Hunter’s 204-Inch Buck Taken, Then Returned
Russ Chastain 12.21.18
A huge whitetail buck head was reportedly taken away from the 17-year-old Georgia hunter who killed the deer with his bow… but it was later returned to him.
When the whitetail rut stirred up a large and well-known buck and got him to wander onto a piece of land where he’d never before been seen, his image was captured by a trail camera, spurring Ragan Paramore to hit the woods to hunt the buck, which the locals had named Chester.
Ragan wanted to be legal when he went hunting, so he attempted to purchase a license using the “Outdoors GA” smart phone app.
“I logged in and went to purchase my license,” said Ragan. “It just sat there and loaded and loaded and loaded. I probably tried three or four times. I tried on WiFi and LTE. There’s just a little thing that was spinning on the phone.”
Ragan said he believed his license purchases went through after multiple attempts, and he went hunting and ended up killing the buck of a lifetime. Ragan was hunting on his grandmother’s land, the family farm.
“I thought my license had gone through until I went to [check in] the deer that afternoon on my phone, and it (Game Check) wasn’t there,” said Ragan. “After I tried… I told daddy about it.”
The buck was massive, with a 20-point rack that scored 204. The boy’s father set about trying to buy a license for his son.
After realizing the license purchases did not go through on Ragan’s phone earlier that afternoon, his dad went to purchase his son’s licenses on his phone.
“Daddy said it wasn’t working on his phone,” said Ragan. “He tried it five or six times. We were on WiFi, and we were thinking the WiFi wasn’t working, so he went and got three bars of LTE, and it still didn’t work.”
Jeff did end up getting Ragan’s licenses after about an hour of trying and multiple attempts.
Because the buck had been harvested illegally, Georgia DNR seized the buck head at Paramore home, and gave Ragan a court date.
Ragan’s father, Jeff… said the family is heart-broken about DNR Law Enforcement Cpl. Greg Wade showing up at the Paramore home to confiscate the deer.
“I don’t want anybody thinking he’s a rogue hunter or anything,” said Jeff. “It’s not like it was an intentional thing, that he was out there hunting to be hunting with no licenses. If it was that case, I would have never bought the license.”
Later, they received a call saying they could pay a fine and get the deer head back. So they ponied up the $237 to ‘bribe’ the government into returning the deer head, and got it back.
As you can imagine, this was a great relief to young Ragan, who will probably never kill a better buck… although he may one day have better hunting stories, because after all, he reportedly shot the massive buck as it fed from a pile of corn.
