Justin Bankston grew up a fanatical deer hunter, but about 12 years ago the Terry resident decided he just couldn’t afford to invest the time. So he became a part-timer, hunting here and there as his busy schedule allowed.
“Starting two businesses and starting a family, I sort of fell out of it,” Bankston said.
However, he realized last year it was time for his 8-year-old son to get involved in the sport, so he joined a Hinds County lease. He still didn’t plan on going full out, though – until he saw a trail-cam photo of a monster buck on the property.
“When I went back and saw that deer, all that changed,” Bankston said of his first look at the buck that eventually green scored about 170 inches. “That’s all I thought about.
“I have sat up on my computer at midnight looking at him, thinking about how I was going to get that deer.”
Click here to see the trail-cam photo that haunted Bankston.
The story began when he placed a bow stand not 200 yards from the lease’s campground in October, setting out a trail cam to gauge what the property held. When he returned to collect the photos, he was astounded to see a massive deer staring at him from one of the photos taken on Oct. 14.
A sweeping rack sat atop the deer’s head, with eight main-frame points and two stickers visible.
The hunter didn’t want to take any chances of spooking the deer, so he pulled his cameras out of the area.
“I didn’t want him coming up at night and getting flashed (by the camera),” Bankston explained. “I knew the deer was old and lived in that area.”
But Bankston put out more stands in the 15- to 20-acre section of woods, bringing his total options to six. That allowed him to hunt the deer on any given wind direction and change things up so he didn’t burn any particular stand.
He shot a doe from the area during bow season, but other than that he just invested his time and waited. And thought about what it would be like to kill that monster.
“I hunted every single weekend, from Friday evening until Sunday night,” Bankston said. “I also hunted three afternoons every week, just trying to get a sighting of that deer.”
Bankston took off work the week before Christmas, and spent the entire time at the camp. He returned home Christmas Eve and spent the following morning with his family, but headed back soon after eating lunch.
“I told my wife, ‘I’m hunting until I kill that deer,’” he said, explaining his wife was also excited about the buck. “My wife was just as pumped up as I was, and wanted me to kill it.”
The following morning, it sleeted and Bankston climbed out of his stand about 11 a.m. He made a looping stalk around the edge of the thicket in which he believed the deer lived.
“When I did, I walked up in front of one of my climbers and found two scrapes that were as big as the hood of your truck,” he said.
Bankston woke up on Dec. 27, the eighth consecutive day of hunting the area, and found it bitterly cold.
“I think it was 17 degrees,” he said. “It was one of those days that you wake up and you wonder if you ought to go.”
The weather was perfect, however, with calm winds. So Bankston got dressed and headed to his climber overlooking the scrapes well before daylight.
The only problem proved getting to the stand and setting up without alerting every deer on the lease.
“I’m thinking, ‘I’m never going to see anything,’” Bankston said. “It was so loud with the leaves frozen that I couldn’t walk quietly on my way in.”
And then he had to jack his climber up a tree, which only made more noise because the loose bark of the tree was frozen and crunched with each movement of the stand.
Bankston finally gave up on getting to his traditional 25 feet, settling in at no more than half that height. He pulled out some doe-in-heat scent and dribbled it on his pants leg, and discovered just how cold it was.
“About a minute later, I look down and the scent is frozen,” he chuckled.
The only silver lining he could find was the fact that it would be impossible for a deer to sneak by him.
“I just knew if anything moves within 100 yards of me I’m going to see it,” Bankston said.
It didn’t take long for the weather to become a factor, and by 7:25 a.m. he was miserable
“I’m sitting there freezing,” he said.
The cold seemed to magically disappear shortly thereafter when he glanced up at the nearby thicket and his heart began hammering out a beat that would make Led Zepplin’s John Bonham proud.
“I looked up directly in front of me, and there he comes,” Bankston said.
At first, the hunter could only see the deer’s feet, legs and shoulders, even though it was only 75 yards away.
“I couldn’t see its rack, but I knew it was a buck because it was so broad,” Bankston said.
As the deer moved through the thicket, however, its head finally passed through a small opening, and Bankston saw the right side of the antlers, complete with double stickers. That was enough for him to know this was the buck he had been after.
“Before I saw any more of him, I dipped my head down and said to myself, ‘I can’t believe this deer is stepping out in front of me,’” Bankston said.
The buck went straight to one of the scrapes and “did his thing,” Bankston said.
Only 50 yards away, the hunter was sitting in his climber feeling exposed and about to go into heart defibrillations: Although the buck was close enough to hit with a rock, there were too many limbs in the way for a clean shot.
“I was scoping him the whole time,” Bankston said.
After freshening up one of the big scrapes, the deer began easing west. Every few steps, the deer would look in the direction of Bankston’s stand. But it didn’t seem to be looking at the climber but at the base of the tree.
“I’m breathing heavy, and my chest was just pumping,” Bankston said. “I’m thinking he’s seeing the smoke from my breath and is getting ready to bolt.”
Finally, the deer stepped into an opening no more than 30 yards from the hunter, and Bankston’s rifle exploded.
“He ran about 75 yards and went down,” Bankston said.
The hunter was shaking from the adrenaline high, and that’s probably what kept him in the stand.
“If it wouldn’t have been so cold, I would have jumped out of the stand immediately and run over there,” he said.
However, his caution because of the cold made him sit tight for the next five minutes. That entire time, he could see the deer trying to get up again. Finally, however, the deer lay down and didn’t move again.
Bankston was sure it was the same deer he had seen in the photo, but he hadn’t really studied he antlers before shooting.
“I never got a good sighting of his horns,” he said. “I just saw that G2 with the kickers.”
When he finally climbed out of the tree and ran to the deer, Bankston knew immediately his persistence had paid off.
“He’s everything I thought he was,” Bankston said. “There was no ground shrinkage.”
Indeed, the rack was massive. The main beams encircled 20 inches of air, and the G2s were sky scrapers. The right G2 surpassed 14 inches, and the left G2 missed that mark by only 1/8 of an inch but included two stickers. The bases measured about 5 inches around.
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