“Daddy, I want to go hunting where those big boned deer are like up at Carthage, or Canton ,” said Olivia Triplett.

    O. B. Triplett was relaxing on the couch after a fine Thanksgiving meal when his daughter, Olivia, came in and woke him up. With 72 degree temperature it was surely too hot to hunt.

    “I don’t know about that Olivia, it’s mighty hot,” said O. B. Triplett. “We can’t go too far since we’re going to a family get together tonight.”

    “The only place we could go with a southeast wind had just one chair and it was a small stand,” said Triplett.

    “I didn’t realize that the stand was so small,” Olivia said. “We got there and were only on the stand a few minutes when I looked up and all I saw was a rack.”

    “Dad, give me the gun, dad give me the gun,” she whispered. “I just got the gun up because I wanted to kill a buck and because he had a rack.”

    “It looks like a good rack,” said O. B. Half of the buck’s body was out in the open lane at 50 yards while the other half was concealed by the weeds.

    Snap- sounded the metallic ping of the safety being switched off. The buck snapped his head around and looked directly at them for a few minutes, and they dared not move a muscle.

    “Dad whispered to me to shoot just as I had the crosshairs by his head,” Triplett said. “He whispered again for me to shoot and I put it right behind his shoulder and squeezed off a shot and he ran off like he hadn’t been shot.”

    “Olivia, I just don’t know about this,” said Triplett. Hopes of a killing shot were fading fast and what they found put a further damper on things.

    “I found a few specks of blood and knew she’d hit the buck but then we found bone and that’s usually not good,” Triplett said. “I was afraid she’d made a leg shot and that it might not be a killing shot.”

    “We both had our doubts,” said Olivia. But their hunt for the buck continued as they followed a light blood trail.

    “I kept looking and we were trailing the deer through briars and thick stuff and I spotted something in the woods,” she said. “Dad I think I see some horns.”

    “Are you sure, Olivia?” said Triplett. “I don’t know, I just can’t see anything.”

    They kept looking and moving forward when O. B. suddenly stopped, turned and spoke to Olivia.

    “Give me the gun, give me the gun,” said O. B.

    “Dad is everything okay?” said Olivia. “I was afraid of what he’d seen, maybe an animal or something the way he was looking. I gave him my gun and he turned around and shined the light on a big deer and eased up to it and nudged him a bit but he was dead.”

    And the celebration began.

    “Olivia you don’t know just what you’ve done,” O. B. said.

    “He picked me up and we hugged and it got all emotional and exciting,” said Olivia. “I was really feeling happy and we were only out there a short time when it all happened. I didn’t realize how good the buck was until we loaded it up.”

    Olivia was dressed up to go to a Thanksgiving dinner in full attire complete with makeup, but she was ready when the moment of truth came.

    “Dad I guess that’s a big boned deer,” Olivia said. “Is that what I just killed? This is crazy.”

    One shot from her Remington .243 rifle was all it took for Olivia to bring down the big buck. Turns out the shot may have been the loudest and most important of her life as people from all around the state have now heard the story of the Scott County monster buck.

    The main frame nine-point weighed 182 pounds and had antlers with plenty of mass and green scored 159 7/8 by Rick Dillard, founder of the Magnolia Records Program. The buck also had six inch bases, 11 inch G-4s and 24 inch main beams.

    Although the 15-year-old East Rankin Academy student began hunting at the age of 10, she’d only harvested a few does, passing on spikes but she was more than up for the task when her moment of truth came. As a result she fired the shot heard around the state and bagged one of the biggest bucks ever killed in Scott County.

    Contact  Mike Giles at 601-917-3898 or e-mail him at mikegiles18@comcast.net