Most outdoorsmen who live in Mississippi are blessed with an abundance of fish and game and hunting opportunities. I count myself as one of the fortunate few who have been blessed with mentors and opportunities to follow my outdoors passion. With that being said it isn’t easy to harvest a wise old buck who has survived a few hunting seasons in the face of all odds. Though we have a lot of deer in Lauderdale County, many are small, and the bucks that live to maturity are usually nocturnal except during the rut.

Hence my quest to find a Christmas buck on public land, or club land which is usually the hardest hunted land to be found. While I’d like to hunt private land chock full of trophy deer, I don’t have the opportunity to hunt on any particular special private land.

I usually ask for a 12-point buck for Christmas since I have what I need, and that is something that money usually can’t buy. I need to accomplish that feat on my own, through hard work, passion and a lot of blessings.

Things were not looking too good for my Christmas buck quest until last week when I visited one of the areas I turkey hunted last spring. During a scouting trip for gobblers I found a massive buck rub and quickly made mental notes of its location, vowing to check it out during the hunting season. It was the largest buck rub I’d ever seen – bigger than a telephone pole!

Alas the buck hadn’t come back to work it anymore when I checked it in October. Two weeks ago I was hunting near the area, so I eased back to the spot during a midday hunt. To my amazement, the buck had just started working the rub again and had left a fresh scrape on the ground and started rubbing on the signpost rub once again.

I was in business and made plans to come back the week before Christmas, which I did last week. With the rut just beginning, I had high expectations of seeing rutting activity. If I was fortunate, I might catch a glimpse of the buck that had made the massive buck rub. I had no doubt he would be a trophy buck.

Arriving at my hunting location on Thursday morning before Christmas, I waited until it was breaking day to ease down into the woods in stealth mode so that I wouldn’t alert any unsuspecting deer of my presence.

I worked my way down a massive ravine and set up across the creek from the buck rub and scrape line. I didn’t detect any deer movement for 45 minutes. I decided to move to a better viewing location because the tree limbs were obscuring my view of the adjacent hillside. I slowly still hunted my way along, making a step, then three, four, stop, look and listen. I repeated this for about 75 yards when I saw the perfect spot, a knoll overlooking the creek bottom and swamp across the creek.

“Crash!” A loud noise alerted me to the presence of a couple deer as one ran up the steep bank to my left. Right behind a doe was a massive buck with chocolate brown covered antlers.

The doe stopped to eat a few acorns and the buck did too, for a minute.

“Baaaahhhh, baaaah”, bellowed the enraged buck as he chased the hot doe, which was obviously in estrous and trying to escape, but he was having none of it. The buck charged the doe and followed her in a zig zag pattern until they ran almost out of sight up the mountain. Suddenly they circled back and started running downhill towards the creek.

As the doe slowed again, the buck strode up to a knoll overlooking the creek with his rack sticking out past his ears and its points reaching to the sky. As he stopped to look over the crest of the knoll I decided to take him, so I put the crosshairs on the buck’s heart area and squeezed the trigger until the rifle roared.

Tic-Boom! My .270 Remington roared, and the buck lurched forward suddenly and tried to flee, but he only made it a few more feet before collapsing in a heap. It took me a little while to traverse the treacherous hills and creek bottom, but I finally made my way to the spot where I’d shot the buck and quickly found a blood trail that led me over the rise to my trophy buck.

My Christmas buck sported 13-points, with a split G-2 including the stickers, and it weighed 180 pounds. A big deer by our standards. Though I’d packed snacks and lunch to spend the morning in the woods, my quest for the Christmas buck ended early at 8 a. m. thanks to the whitetail deer rut. If you are looking for that trophy buck, now is the time to get into the woods in search of a rutting buck. And who knows, you just might harvest the buck of a lifetime! Carpe Diem!

Call Mike Giles at 601-917-3898 or email mikegiles18@comcast.net.