LEON, W.Va. — When the 2025 archery season opened up, Brady Reymond of Milton, W.Va. had plans to hunt a 150 acre plot of property he leased from a landowner in Mason County. But the same landowner, a longtime friend, had recently been gifted a new piece of property. It was a 17 acre plot and he offered to let Brady look it over as another potential hunting spot.
“It was kind of out of the blue and I said, ‘Well heck I’ll throw up a cell camera on anything.’ Then low and behold the first four pictures I got were the buck I ended up killing,” said Reymond in an episode of West Virginia Outdoors.
The discovery was made early in the archery season just as bucks were starting to chase does. The situation intrigued Reymond who made plans to hunt the area after those pictures and some brief scouting. But, it would be a hunt which started out with a mistake, which turned out to be no mistake at all.
“I had an idea of the tree I wanted to be in with my climber, so I got in there before daylight, but I got confused. I set my climber up in a tree, but it turned out I was way closer to a set of rubs than I wanted to be down wind of. The tree I wound up getting in, I could only get about 13 or 14 feet up before limbs were overhanging and you wouldn’t have shooting lanes,” he said.
Listen to “Brady Reymond — Mason County buck” on Spreaker.
But it turned out not to matter at all. Not long into the first sit, along came the buck Reymond had spotted on camera. But he wasn’t alone.
“He was actually with a larger buck and they were pushing a doe. They were ping-ponging her back and forth in this bottom. I couldn’t get a shot at him when I first saw him. SoI waited until they were out of sight for about five minutes and I gave three grunt call and he came back in full speed. I was really surprised,” he explained.
Reymond said the buck didn’t want to stop and he practically had to yell at the animal to halt his advance and stand for the shot. He let the arrow fly and had some trepidation about the mark he hit. An inspection of the area where the buck stood revealed a considerable loss of blood and likely a lethal and quick wound. The buck went 80 yards before falling over dead. Reymond recovered him in just a few hours.
But what about the bigger buck? Did Reymond have any desire to change his target mid-stream after the discovery?
“I’m more of a bird in-the-hand kind of guy,” he laughed. “Either buck would have been my best buck to date. The other buck being down in there I actually never got a picture. So the first buck that came running up through there was going to be the one I shot since they were both in the Pope and Young class,” he explained.
With his big buck down, now the tougher task, trying to lock down a price on that lease with his buddy.
“I’m sure the price just went way up,” Reymond laughed.