Justin is an avid whitetail hunter who lives in Ridgeland, Mississippi. He's fortunate to have access to 1,500 acres in deer-rich Madison County on land owned by his father-in-law.

"I'm about the only person who hunts this property seriously," Justin said. "My father-in-law and his brother hunt the land some, but they're not as serious about deer hunting as I am. The property has some good deer. I was bowhunting last year, and I arrowed a 140-class 9-point and a 138-class 10-point within 13 hours of each other. Later, when I found this big buck's photo on a trail camera, I set out to hunt him until I got him."

When Justin saw the first trail camera photo of this huge buck, he breathed a giant sigh of relief. You'll understand why in the next two paragraphs.

"A friend of mine had just gotten home from a hunt in Illinois on Nov. 26, and he felt that he needed to shoot his rifle to be sure the scope was sighted in. We went out to our property, and he zeroed his rifle. I suggested that we hunt awhile that afternoon, since we were already out there. My friend got in a box stand while I sat on a tripod a few hundred yards away. When we got down at dark, all we had seen were a couple of small bucks.

"The next day, I went out to the property to check my trail camera and found the picture of the big buck. What really shook me up was that the imprint of the time on the photo showed that the buck had visited the scrape where the camera was located exactly nine minutes after my friend had left the stand. Nine minutes! That's how close he came to having that monster walk out on him!" (Could it be that this obviously woods-wise mature buck waited for Justin's friend to leave the area before going over to his scrape?)

A NERVE-RACKING QUEST
For Justin, that photo triggered a series of events that would culminate 24 days later after many hours of sitting in a stand.

"I went back out and placed two cameras, one on each side of an old road that goes through the property," Justin continued. "On one camera, there were pictures of several deer, but on the other, which was placed overlooking a 60-acre patch of old field where nobody had hunted, I got pictures of the big buck every night at a scrape under a lone oak out in the field. He was the only deer that ever appeared in photos from this camera, and that told me he was the bull of the woods in the area. We started calling this buck 'the Freak' because of the unusual mass and configuration of antlers he carried."

In order to have the best chance at this Mississippi giant, Justin put up six lock-on stands in a 200-yard circle around the scrape the buck was using.

page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4