Deer dominate most-read stories on site
Mississippi’s outdoor scene was certainly not lacking in newsworthy stories throughout 2023. It seemed like a month never passed without something of great interest to hunters and fishermen taking place — some good, some not so good, some just interesting.
We looked at MS-Sportsman.com and we came up with the 5 most-read stories of 2023. Hope you enjoy looking back at them.
1. Greenwood teen kills huge Grenada County buck
By Dan Kibler
The Boone & Crockett Club’s all-time record book lists only a handful of whitetail bucks whose racks carried only eight points.
It may take some luck, but a 15-year-old high-school freshman from Greenwood has killed a huge buck that may join them.
Luke Kelly was hunting on a relative’s 300-acre farm in Grenada County on Sunday afternoon when he arrowed an enormous whitetail. On first glance, it looks like an 11-pointer – a 5×5 frame and a 2 ½-inch sticker point on the right antler behind the brow tine.
But put a tape measure on it, and it may very well end up as a typical 8-pointer. One visible point near the end of the right beam doesn’t quite measure an inch, so it’s not scorable, and the corresponding point on the left beam measures barely an inch, so if it shrinks at all during the 60-day drying period required by B&C, it may wind up unscoreable, leaving Kelly with a main-frame 4×4 monster that has been pre-scored by a certified B&C scorer at 179 4/8 points gross and 170 6/8 net.
Read the full story here.
2. Hattiesburg hunter kills huge Adams County buck
By Dan Kibler
Griffin Gatwood said he’d never laid eyes on the buck until Oct. 4, despite having trail cameras out on a piece of Adams County hunting land for quite a while.
At first glance, he thought he was certainly a nice one, maybe 140 or 150 inches. But he was hunting other big bucks on other pieces of property, so he didn’t just jump up and start looking for the new arrival right away.
But when he kept showing up every afternoon between 4:30 and 5, well, that got the attention of Gatwood, a 21-year-old Mississippi State engineering student from Hattiesburg. So on Oct. 28, when the wind direction seemed right for the place where the trail camera was set up, he decided it was time.
About 3 hours later, he was standing over a 185-pound, 190-inch buck.
“There was definitely no ground shrinking, no sir,” Gatwood said.
Read the full story here.
3. Tiny third-grader bags possible Hancock County record buck
By Dan Kibler
Hancock County, one of Mississippi’s extreme southern counties, isn’t known for producing the huge whitetail bucks that other areas in the state regularly spit out.
So when a Waveland hunter bagged a 150-inch 9-pointer on Nov. 4, people sat up and took notice.
The fact that the hunter was a girl in the third-grade at West Hancock Elementary School also drew some notice.
Saylor Stiglet might not have gotten a shot at the big buck had she not forgotten to take the safety off moments earlier, while drawing a bead on a doe from a box blind she shared with her father, Jonathan Stiglet. In the moments it took her father to help her negotiate the safety on the borrowed rifle, the buck stepped out into a food plot at 95 yards.
She put a shot through the buck, which took off, circumscribing a 400-yard path through the woods that ended in a cutover, 75 yards from the place it was shot – watching its backtrail. With help from dogs belonging to Ben Ward of Gulfport, Jonathan found the deer two days later.
Read the full story here.
4. Franklin County hunter drops buck of a lifetime after 4 years
By Dan Kibler
Christopher Lunsford first saw this big buck four seasons ago, when he walked out with a big, old buck that he was targeting on some family property in his home county, Franklin.
“I was trying to kill this big old buck that was on the decline, when this buck walked out with him. If he had been on public land, I’d have shot him,” Lunsford said. “The first time I saw him, I figured he was 3 ½, maybe 4 ½, but his body wasn’t big enough.”
That first encounter was on opening day of archery season in 2019. It was the only time he saw the buck in person or on one of his trail cameras for almost a year. He showed back up in the summer of 2020, and Lunsford got photos of him through the summer of 2023. He was bigger in 2020, bigger even then in 2021, down just a bit in 2022, and at close to his peak on Oct. 5 when Lunsford finally killed him with a shot through the shoulder at about 25 yards just before dark.
The buck has been green-scored a handful of times at between 187 ⅜ and 194 ⅛ inches Boone & Crockett gross. With 16 scoreable points on a 5×6 frame, it’s a coin flip whether the buck will score higher as a typical or non-typical.
“He’s going to have 12 or 13 inches of non-typical deductions,” Lunsford said. “If he stays a typical, he could be close to the state record (Earl Stubblefield’s Lafayette County buck from 2016 that scored 181 2/8.) He could easily go 178 or 179. He’s got so much mass. He carries it all the way out.”
Read the full story here.
5. Anglers fishing off Mississippi Delta land Gulf’s largest blue marlin
By John N. Felsher
On Oct. 19, 2023, the Best Trait, captained by Chris Mowad, fished the Blind Faith rig, located about 60 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi River. The immense rig, the deepest operated by Chevron, sits in about 7,000 feet of water in Mississippi Canyon blocks 695 and 696 in the Gulf of Mexico. The rig stands 29 stories tall, including the massive structure underwater. A “block” covers one degree in latitude by two degrees of longitude or about 5,000 to 5,760 acres.
Sitting in the hot seat that day, Scott “Scooter” Anderson, Jr. of Houston, Texas, fought a giant blue marlin in a duel to the death. The enormous blue weighed 1,145.60 pounds. It stretched 175 inches, or 14.58 feet, from the tip of its bill to its tail. Without the bill, the behemoth measured 145 inches long or just over 12 feet with an 84-inch, or 7-foot girth.
Get the full story here.
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