Hailey Hayward, a 13-year-old eighth grader at Grenada Middle School, didn’t get buck fever on her first deer-hunting trip this fall, during Youth Season on Nov. 5 in Grenada County.
Nope, she never displayed any nervousness when a huge non-typical buck – 182 inches and 223 pounds – stepped into a food plot, 125 yards from the box blind she occupied with her father, Jeremy “J” Hayward.
The second time Hailey squeezed the trigger, the bullet from her father’s 6.5 Creedmoor turned the buck a complete somersault. It never even wiggled.
But it’s how she came to be pulling the trigger a second time that left her father shaking his head at the buck fever he got twice that day.
“I have been watching this deer for 4 years on my neighbor’s property, but I never got him on my property until my neighbor put a stand right in his bedding area, 400 yards from my property, and pushed him over here,” Hayward said. “He came over to our place in mid-October, and I had him on camera for about 3 weeks. He showed up 2 days after the guy put up that stand. I bought a crossbow so I could hunt him during bow season, because I figured I had to get him before rifle season.”
A missing bullet
Instead, Hailey wanted to go when Youth Season arrived, and since Hayward had a couple of decent 8-pointers on camera using the food plot, he took her that morning. Hayward said his daughter was perfectly happy at getting a crack at a doe or two – since she’d never killed a deer before.
That’s when things got interesting.
“When we got out of the truck, I gave her her .30-30, but I realized I’d forgotten her bullets,” he said. “I had my 6.5 in the truck, and I told her, ‘Baby, it doesn’t kick bad; you can shoot it,’ so we took it.
“We got in the stand, and at 6:43, he walked out. I looked at him real good and realized it was that buck I’d been looking at. I told her to put it on him and just squeeze real easy, and when she did, all we got was a ‘click.’
“She said, ‘Dad, I think you forgot to put a bullet in.’”
The buck was 125 yards out, and when he entered the food plot – rye, oats, turnips and wheat – it had looked up at the box blind, then went right back to feeding. Hayward carefully slid a cartridge into the gun and closed the bolt.
“When I bolted the bullet in, he looked up at us again,” Hayward said. “I told her to go ahead, and she shot and he flipped over completely backwards.”
The buck never wiggled. The bullet went high through the rib cage and took out the bottom of its spine. When they got to the buck, there was definitely no ground shrinkage. On trail-cam pictures, Hayward had figured the buck at around 160 inches, but it grew up quickly.
Local celebrity
Rough-scored at a deer processor, the buck scored 182 green gross, featuring a 4×5 main-frame rack and five sticker points, including a 9-inch drop tine on the left beam. The buck had only a 15-inch inside spread, but he had brow tines measuring 8 ¾ and 8 ½ inches, 22 ¼- and 24-inch beams, two tines around 12 ½ inches and two more just on either side of 8 inches.
“I was figuring in the high 160s, maybe because it wasn’t that wide, but when the guy who measured it said 182, I asked, ‘Can we do that again?’” Hayward said.
Measured a second time, it came to 182 again. Now, the Haywards will wait to have the buck officially scored after the required 60-day drying period.
Hailey became an instant celebrity around her hometown of Holcomb, both among fellow students and adults who knew about the buck.
“Quite a few people had photos of him, but they didn’t let on until he was dead,” Hayward said. “I had been looking at him for a long time. I think he was at least 6 ½ years old. Last year, he was probably 18 inches (wide), so he wasn’t as big this year, but his drop tine had gotten longer, and it was starting to splinter at the end. Last year, he lost his left side 2 weeks before the season ended.
“He’s a great deer for a first deer for a 13-year-old girl. Shoot, he’s a great deer for anybody.”
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