Raymond’s David Barton had had a great season already. His wife Roxie and 10-year-old daughter Cloe had popped their first bucks, and his 8-year-old son had put down a doe. Barton also had hosted a Wounded Warriors hunt, and several others had killed their first deer on the family land near his Hinds County home.
So when the alarm clock sounded Saturday (Jan. 29), he hit the snooze. Twice.
“I almost didn’t get up and go,” Barton said. “I had hunted hard all year, and I’d killed a couple of does but hadn’t seen a buck worth shooting. I was just tired of hunting, really, plus I had already had a great year.”
Finally, he rolled out of bed and puttered around the house a bit. At 6:15 a.m., he decided he might as well sit a stand for a bit.
That turned out to be a great decision, as a 170-inch buck stepped out about an hour after he settled into a stand on a pipeline.
“I was looking to my left across a creek where all the bucks had been coming from,” Barton explained. “My wife texted me, and I looked down and then to my right.
“He was halfway across the pipeline.”
All the hunter knew was that the rack atop the buck’s head was very tall.
“I thought he was a pretty good 8-point, but I had no idea how big he was,” Barton said.
He snatched his rifle up, laid it on the window of the stand and put his eye to the scope. The buck had stopped.
“I think when I hit the rifle on the side of the stand he stopped,” Barton said. “I had about five seconds to make the shot.
“I didn’t even have time to think.”
The 50-yard shot was easy, and the buck bolted into the woods – but soon Barton heard the satisfying sound of the deer thrashing about.
“He went about 40 yards in the woods, and I heard him fall,” he said.
After getting the adrenaline surge that came after the shot under control, the hunter climbed from the stand and retrieved his trophy.
It turned out the buck was a dandy, with 10 extremely symmetrical tines and long main beams that enclosed 19 inches of air.
But, while Barton knew it was the biggest deer he had shot, he really didn’t appreciate the size of the rack at first.
“I didn’t realize how big he was until people started showing up to take pictures,” he laughed.
The 25-inch main beams, 10-inch G2s and the 11-inch G3s combined with mass measurements that began with 5-inch bases to total a green score of 172 inches Boone & Crockett.
“It’s danged near perfect,” Barton said. “I didn’t notice until people started taking pictures, and I saw that the G3s and the G4s and the G2s almost cover up the matching points from the side.”
Barton said the kill, only days before the season closed, simply added an exclamation point to an already great few months.
“With (his wife and daughter) killing their first deer, and my son killing one … this buck was just icing on the cake,” he said. “It was a perfect season even before I killed this deer.”
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