A 200-inch whitetail is a bucket-list specimen, and, for most of us, it’s a box that’ll never be ticked.
In 2020, then-15-year-old Claire Flood put a big checkmark on the list she didn't even know existed by felling a monster in Breckinridge County, Kentucky. And get this: It was her very first deer!
Five days into the state's rifle season, she and her dad, Duane, returned to the double ladder stand from which she'd spotted a large buck at dusk the previous afternoon.
“The stand is in a good spot,” her father told Dale Weddle, who penned the story for the spring issue of Rack magazine. “Two fields funnel into the area, and the woods around there had been gently logged about two years earlier. The loggers were picky and left quite a few oak trees standing.”
The Floods had hunted there for three days in a row. A half-hour after settling in Wednesday, a dandy 6-pointer and a doe appeared. Duane told his daughter the buck would be a great first deer, but Claire was determined to hold out for one as big or bigger than one her cousin had shot.
When those deer left, another doe passed through the area. Soon after she disappeared, Duane and Claire heard something behind them.
“Claire turned slowly, looked at the deer, and announced, ‘It’s a big one. I’m going to shoot it,’” said Duane, who couldn’t see it clearly. “I whispered, ‘Just be still.’”
The buck gave the stand the hairy eyeball, but it eventually circled around them and stopped.
“When she looked through the scope, she said, ‘It’s got eight points on ONE side!’” Duane smiled. “She was breathing so hard that I was afraid she was going to fog up the scope, so I told her to stop looking at the antlers.”
The Breckinridge County High School freshman’s inability to breathe properly didn’t affect her aim, however. Moments later, she was kneeling beside the 22-pointer, which wound up scoring 213 6/8 inches.
Buckmasters Whitetail Trophy Records has numerous categories, but we don’t record the ages of hunters. Nevertheless, based on recent memory, we know of only one Kentucky buck taken by a kid under the age of 16 that’s larger.
— Read Recent Blog! Sorry, Little Brother: Greg Shembarger is the reason I seldom use the phrase “buck of a lifetime.”