Final Boone & Crockett f score or Walthall County deer settles on 191 2/8
On Dec. 2, the opening day of primitive weapon season, Dwight Shaffer was waiting for his brother Burnell to pick him up and drive to a nearby hunting camp for an afternoon hunt.
Then his wife’s father interrupted with his latest story about a big deer he’d been seeing, news that nearly landed Shaffer in the Boone & Crockett Record Book of North American Big Game.
“My neighbor, he’s my father-in-law, had been telling me about this buck he’d been seeing,” said Shaffer. “That day, he stopped me and told me that he’d seen the big one again that morning, the one he said looked like he had a chair on his head.
“That’s what he said. The buck had a chair on his head.”
So when his brother arrived, Dwight announced other plans: “I think we’ll stay here.”
“Here” was basically a 20-acre block of woods the Shaffer family has in their backyard just outside Tylertown in Walthall County.
Two hours later, the brothers were sitting on the back of their ATV trailer posing with a trophy buck.
Dwight Shaffer, using a new CVA .35 Whelen bought this year, shot the monster buck his father-in-law had described.
And, no, it didn’t have a chair on its head, but he darn sure had the hardware to build one.
“Man, he’s got horns sticking out everywhere,” said Dwight Shaffer. “He’s got a head-full of antlers.”
The full story of the hunt was told in an earlier story on this site.
Biologist Chris McDonald of the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks put a tape to the buck’s rack in February for the official score of the main-frame 10 point that carried eight abnormal, or non-typical points.
The final score was 191 2/8 inches, including the 29 6/8 inches of non-typical points. It missed the B&C minimum of 195 by just 3 ½ inches.
It may not make the all-time record book, but it is certainly a monster by any standards and especially for Walthall County. It had previously produced just three listings in Magnolia Records.
“I have never seen one anything close to that around here,” Dwight Shaffer said. “But people around here with trail cams have been talking about seeing a big one on pictures. I’ve never seen the pictures so I don’t know.
“But I think I saw this buck two years ago. He wasn’t this big and tall but he was a good one.”
Thanks to his father-in-law’s heads-up, Dwight Shaffer was in the right place at the right time.
“I was in an Ol’ Man climbing stand about 100 yards from my back door,” he said. “There is a big stand of small pines out there that is a magnet bedding area for deer. Just before dark, I saw him step out.
“I could see the antlers in my Nikon scope and I put the crosshairs on his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. He fell right where I first saw him.”
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