Potential state record deer arrowed in Jefferson County

Editor’s note: This buck was later certified as the state-record archery buck, topping the category in the Magnolia Records at 172 4/8 Pope & Young.

Will Rives is a die-hard hunter who is lucky enough to hunt almost every day during the winter. But on Dec. 15, he woke up at 4:30, got dressed and stepped outside to find a south wind and 60-degree weather – and then promptly walked back inside, crawled in bed and went back to sleep.

“That’s not like me, it usually doesn’t matter if it’s 80 outside,” Rives said. “When we knock off (of work) for the wintertime, I hunt every day. I’m relentless.”

The Natchez hunter’s change in habit had a lot to do with the hunt the evening before, when he stuck a 15-point that has been green scored by state officials at a gross of 198 4/8 Pope & Young, with a net of 176 inches.

If the net measurements hold, Rives’ buck will be the state record archery-killed typical deer. The current record is a 167 2/8-inch Tallahatchee County beast arrowed by Rob Stockett III in 2007.

Click here to view a video in which Rives tells the story in his own words.

Rives’ buck was killed the afternoon of Dec. 14 after the store shooter for Bowie Outfitters found a funnel between a thick cypress brake and a road on a Jefferson County piece of property.

“There was a hooking off the road,” he said. “So I just walked off the road with a lock-on, and I got to a cypress tree that was about the size of my thigh. On the other side, he had just worked it over.”

The hunter then found two or three scrapes, circled to the downwind side of that scrape line and hung his stand.

“When I got in the stand, I saw four more scrapes,” Rives said. “It was a no-brainer.”

He got settled into the stand about 2 p.m., and waited until 3:30 p.m. to do a rattle sequence.

At 4:20 or so, a doe and yearling eased into range. Rives’ trigger finger began twitching.

“I’m usually hard on the does,” he said.

But he had a “good feeling” about his chances to see the buck working the funnel, so he let the two deer walk.

“They were feeding on hackberry, and it took them 15 to 20 minutes to catch my scent,” Rives said. “Then they ran off.”

A few minutes later, he did another rattling series.

“I rattled, grunted and did an estrus bleat,” he explained.

About 5 p.m., Rives caught movement in the cypress thicket.

“I saw a buck coming out of the cypress brake,” he said. “I didn’t know how big he was; I just saw horns.”

The hunter grabbed his bow and prepared in case it was a shooter, and watched the deer as it moved through the thicket. He still couldn’t make a real assessment of the size of the buck’s rack.

“I seen a glimpse of him about 30 yards from me, and I could see he had some pretty good horns,” Rives said.

And then the buck finally stuck its head out of the obscuring vegetation.

“When he walked out at 25 yards, as soon as he poked his head out I could see that left side with that kicker,” Rives said. “That’s the last time I looked at the horns.”

At that point, Rives knew the buck was really big. He figured it would measure 165 to 170 inches.

The hunter slowly drew back his Hoyt Alpha Burner bow, and waited patiently as the deer eased along into position.

Surprisingly, he was dead calm.

“Don’t ask me why,” Rives chuckled. “Thirty minutes before when I was thinking about shooting that doe, my heart was pumping.”

The deer finally stopped at about 13 yards, and Rives figured he might better shoot.

“I don’t know when my bow is going to go off,” he said. “I was squeezing my finger and pushing (the bow out), and he turned his body to me right when the release went off.”

Rives was uncertain if he had put a good shot on the deer or missed as the deer bounded away.

“That sucker went out there about 30 or 35 yards and looked like he wasn’t hurt,” the now-anxious hunter said. “He was in that thicket where I couldn’t get a shot.”

The buck stood for a few minutes, and then turned and disappeared.

“He flicked his tail, and then he looked like a quarter horse: He just loped off,” Rives said.

Soon, however, Rives heard what sounded like the deer laying down.

But he still wasn’t sure what he’d hit the buck until climbing out of the tree 45 minutes later.

“I found one drop of blood right where I hit him,” Rives said. “I then recovered my arrow, and when I examined it back at the truck I knew it wasn’t a gut shot.”

He returned to the camp and waited anxiously for four hours before finally returning with buddy Mackey Myers.

The pair picked up the blood trail, and Rives was marking the last-known blood when Myers saw the buck.

“Mackey saw him first, and said, ‘He’s a toad,’” Rives said. “He said, ‘It’s a 185, and I ain’t got there yet.’”

When Rives joined him, the two hunters just stood and stared.

“We stood there and just looked at him,” Rives said. “I realized what I had, but I didn’t realize the impact he would make.

“I didn’t think about the state record.”

The buck’s rack was enormous. The 25-inch main beams sprouted from 5 ½-inch bases and featured 11 typical points that towered above the deer’s head.

“The tines ranged from between 10 and 12 inches,” Rives said. “The brow tines were 6 inches long.”

Amazingly, the buck didn’t technically meet the club’s buck criteria, which calls for hunters to let bucks younger than 5 ½ years old to walk.

“That (SOB) was 3 ½ years old,” Rives said of the probable state record.

Rives said he was just humbled by the kill.

“Out in the Midwest, they kill them all the time, but to kill a deer like this in the state of Mississippi is something else,” he said. “That just shows you they’re there.”

And he admitted that, despite his lifelong addiction to bow hunting and his years of tournament shooting, there was nothing special about what he did to put himself into position to make the shot.

“I ain’t no trophy hunter,” Rives said. “I get just as much out of shooting (130-, 140-inch) bucks as I did shooting this one.

“I was just a guy in the right place at the right time that did the right things.”

Rives had already taken some trophy bucks, with his best two taping in the 160s, but he always had dream to arrow an absolute bruiser. He can now tick that off his bucket list.

“It’s just a lifelong goal, and to finally meet it is unbelievable,” he said.

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