A Virginia Giant’s Fatal Mistake
By Mark Melotik
Virginia’s Jessica Burks will likely never forget Thanksgiving day of 2023. It’s because Thursday, Nov. 19 found her in a treestand hunting a buck she had been chasing for the past four years, and year five would finally give her the opportunity she’d dreamed of.
Four years previous on another Thanksgiving day, Jessica had been hunting the same private 140-acre Amherst County parcel when she glimpsed a deer big enough to rattle her to the core.
“I was by myself, up in a Redneck blind,” Jessica recalled. “I looked to my right and saw a huge deer. I couldn’t even get myself together enough to turn around and try to get the window down. He walked right by me, behind me, and I was just sick to my stomach. I went back in and told everyone I saw this huge buck, but no one believed me.”
Jessica, a psychiatric nurse, has been an avid hunter he entire life, beginning with shooting sessions with her dad at the tender age of five. She shot her first deer as a teenager but had never hunted anything quite like the monarch that had been haunting her family’s 140-acre tract, a buck that had always seemed to make an appearance right around Thanksgiving.
“I had cameras up at the place, but I never got any videos or photos of him,” Jessica explained. “Every year after that [first sighting], around Thanksgiving, I would see him again. He was old and he was smart.”
The pendulum would finally swing back in Jessica’s favor last Thanksgiving as she sat in a treestand watching a cornfield with her son.
“There was a fire on the mountain on the [nearby] national forest, and a lot of smoke had come down and provided a lot of cover,” Jessica recalled. “I was sick before that, I had pneumonia, and I didn’t get to hunt for about a month. I probably should not have been out there.”
Some time after 4 p.m. that day, things started to happen quickly.
“I looked out to the field, and he was there at 158 yards. Luckily I couldn’t see him that well, but I still knew what it was,” Jessica said of smokey scene. “That was the only time that he really messed up.”
She watched as the buck walked in to her right, casually eating corn off the ground. As he stood broadside, Jessica leveled her rifle and slowly squeezed the trigger.
“As soon as he fell down, I went to my knees. I was crying; I knew exactly what he was,” Jessica remembered. “Then I took a secondary, insurance shot to make sure he didn’t go anywhere. Then I called my husband.
Despite her husband’s advice to stay put and wait for help to retrieve the giant, Jessica had other ideas.
“I jumped out of that stand as fast as I could and ran over there. I didn’t realize how big he was or how much he had going on. When I went to pick him up, he was wrapped up in some vines. I was just crying; when you hunt a buck that hard — it was just an appreciation for that animal.”
After news of her trophy got out, Jessica would learn several others had been chasing the monster, also for multiple years. A few had captured trail camera photos of the buck, which apparently spent much of its time on the nearby national forest lands. Jessica had the wily buck aged at 8.5 years.
The character-filled rack of the Virginia giant features unique main beams that droop steeply downward. The mainframe 8-point rack features three drop tines and several stickers and kickers. The official BTR score is 168 1/8, entering the BTR record book in the Centerfire Rifle Irregular category.
To see and hear Jessica tell the incredible story of her five-year-long adventure, visit YouTube and check out episode 80 of the Buckmasters Outdoors Podcast: “168” FREAK from the Hills of Virginia.”