A before-school coyote hunt 300 yards behind his dad’s farm headquarters in Benton County produced what Kyle Simpson, 15, figures is his “buck of a lifetime.”
Quite possibly even a record-book buck.
Scorer Rick Dillard, a founder of Mississippi’s Magnolia Records Program, measured Simpson’s non-typical 19-point, a main-frame 10 with 9 stickers, at 195 6/8 net.
“I conservatively grossed it at 207 4/8 inches, and the net score was probably even more conservative,” said Dillard, who really thinks the buck will score higher. “It is a difficult rack to score, because of the palmation and where some of the non-typical points are located. I always go conservative on a green score, and then get a panel of scorers to go back with me after the 60-day drying period.
“To be honest, I really think this buck will score higher. A lot of non-typicals score higher when officially scored by a panel and I wouldn’t be surprised one bit if that is the case.”
Simpson was certainly surprised the morning of Nov. 9, the Friday ending the first week of youth gun season for deer. He was looking for the coyotes his dad, Kevin Simpson, had been seeing at their farm near Ashland.
Because he has successfully completed a hunter education course, Kyle Simpson was legal to hunt alone. He was exempt from the youth season requirement that hunters must be in the direct supervision of a licensed or exempt adult, over the age of 21.
“Dad told me that if I wanted to, I could probably kill a coyote or two if I went back in that big cornfield behind the barn,” the youngster said. “He’d been seeing a lot of coyotes and I figured I had time to hunt them before school.
“I was driving my truck back down the road toward the field and the sun was just starting to rise. I was going kind of slow hoping I might jump a coyote. I never did.”
When the road took him to the cornfield, he decided to drive across it to get a look on the far side.
“I cut across that field and I had to drive over this terrace and when I did, I saw seven bucks,” Kyle Simpson said. “Man, I wasn’t expecting that but I didn’t waste any time thinking about it.”
Six of the bucks were in a food plot, but one was closer, still milling around in the corn. That was the one that caught the hunter’s eye, first because he was the closest and then because…
“When he looked up at me, I could see he had a massive rack,” he said. “I knew immediately that he was the one I wanted to shoot. I didn’t even really look at the others except to see if they were spooking. They weren’t. They were just looking at me.”
Simpson said that deer are used to seeing farm vehicles working the property all the time, plus he had the rising sun at his back.
“That’s probably why they didn’t spook, but I didn’t want to do anything to spook them, like back the truck down the terrace,” he said. “I grabbed my gun, got out of the truck and kind of trotted over to this one light pole that was about 20 yards away. It was the only thing I could think of where I could get a good angle and a good rest to take a shot.
“I kept heading toward the pole, and was watching the buck and he was just standing there watching me. I got to the pole, leaned against it, got steady and found him in my scope.”
Thinking back, Simpson said he has no idea how much time passed between seeing the bucks, grabbing his gun and reaching the light pole.
“No sir, I really don’t but I knew I didn’t have a lot of time,” he said. “I was surprised he just stood there that long. He was between 200 and 250 yards away and was just looking at me. I got on him, took the shot and he just fell over, right where he was standing.”
Simpson said he looked up and noticed the six other bucks running off.
“When I shot and he fell, they took off,” he said. “I never got a really good look at any of them, but I think there were a couple of other good ones in the bunch.”
Heck, he still didn’t know how good his buck was, laying low in the corn stubble across the field.
“I jumped back in my truck and drove right up to him and got out,” Simpson said. “I walked over and couldn’t believe what I saw. That’s when I got nervous. I realized he was the biggest one I was probably ever going to kill and I had killed him right then.
“I was thinking, ‘man, I can’t believe I just killed one that big.’ I had never seen one in person that big alive or mounted. I still can’t believe it. I killed a non-typical on the farm a few years ago, but it was nowhere near that big. I called Dad immediately.”
Kevin Simpson was at his off-site office and had to drive out to the farm, go past the shop and the 300 yards to the field. He didn’t waste a lot of time because, well, you know…
“When he called me, he started hollering in the phone ‘Dad, I killed a monster. I killed a monster. You aren’t going to believe what I just killed. It’s a monster.’
“I was thinking, ‘yeah, yeah yeah, I bet.’ But when I drove across that field and saw him standing there with this big ol’ grin on his face, I started thinking maybe he had. I got out of the truck and he said, ‘Dad, look at what I just killed.’”
Kyle Simpson then reached down and grabbed the massive buck’s head and turned it toward his father.
“When he did that, I was stunned,” Kevin Simpson said. “I said ‘I guess you did kill a monster.’ Then he wanted me to start taking pictures and I did. We took a bunch.”
Within five minutes, the giant buck’s picture was flying through cyberspace. It hit Kyle Simpson’s Facebook page, and made its way to many of his friends. It reached the 9th-grade classrooms at Marshall Academy 17 miles away in Holly Springs long before the hunter did.
“By the time I got to school that morning, my friends already knew about it and even my teachers had heard about it,” he said. “That’s what everybody was talking about.”
Kevin Simpson said nobody had ever seen the big buck, or reported seeing it before that day.
“We had no idea we had a buck like that up here,” he said. “We get some big bucks. I’ve killed a big 10 up there a long time ago and we’ve had a couple of non-typicals over the year, including that one that Kyle killed several years ago. This deer was huge. Kyle and I couldn’t load it. I had to send one of my guys down there with a backhoe to get it. It weighed 250 pounds and barely fit in the backhoe bucket. It was big.
“We don’t put trail cams up here because in this part of the country, if you put up a trail cam, it will be gone before you ever go back to check it. So we didn’t have a clue there was one like that around here.”
Dillard scored the deer a few days later, and provided the attached measurements. Pay special attention to the list of the circumferences (as much as 8 6/8), which is where Dillard thinks the buck could easily pick up some inches. The smallest measurements are the bases and the second circumference spot. From there, it gets really broad.
“The thing is really palmated and has amazing mass,” Dillard said. “It’s got some long tines (10 6/8 the biggest) but they look longer than they are because they grow out of that unique palmation. It will be interesting to score again.”
The story could end there, but there’s an anecdote that Kevin Simpson added about his son.
“You know he went back to that same field later and got a good shot at what he said was a really good 10 point,” the father said. “He missed. He completely missed it.”
In his defense, Kyle Simpson said the 100-yard shot wasn’t easy.
“I was walking to my stand and I jumped him,” he said. “I didn’t have but a few seconds before he started moving so I shot and I missed. I didn’t have a good rest.”
There was no conveniently placed pole to lean against. What there was, his dad joked, was perhaps too much time.
“That monster buck, that all happened so fast and so far away that he never had time to let the antlers get to his head,” Kevin Simpson said. “The second time, on that 10-point, I think he got a little nervous.”
To the youngster’s credit, he kept his cool when it counted most.
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Hunter: Kyle Simpson
County: Benton
Date Harvested: 9-Nov-12
Inside Spread 19 6/8
Right Left Difference
Main Beam 21 22 1/8 1 1/8
G1 2 3/8 2 4/8 1/8
G2 10 9 1
G3 8 3/8 10 6/8 2 3/8
G4 6 9 4/8 3 4/8
H1 4 2/8 4 4/8 2/8
H2 4 4 2/8 2/8
H3 8 6/8 6 6/8 2
H4 7 3/8 8 4/8 1 1/8
72 1/8 77 7/8 11 6/8
Abnormal Points
1 4/8 7
8 2/8 2 2/8
4 2 2/8
2 4/8 4 2/8
5 6/8
22 15 6/8
Gross Score 207 4/8
Net Score 195 6/8
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