When 14-year-old Micalah Millard and her father spotted a monster buck on their trail camera in McIntosh County, Oklahoma, they knew they had a giant deer on their hands, but they had no idea it could put her in the record books.
Millard ended up taking a 12-point deer with a 24-inch spread that scored 187 1/8 inches through typical deer scoring methods. The marks made the deer Millard shot the second largest “typical whitetail” ever shot in the state and the largest ever taken in Oklahoma by a woman, according to the Tulsa World newspaper.
How they came upon such a monster buck was something of serendipity. The pair placed a trail camera in a forgotten area of their family’s ranch where they knew nobody had hunted for quite a while. When they checked the camera on Saturday it had 1,000 images on it, some of which showed the monster buck. So they set out a tree stand and came to sit in it that later that afternoon.
As luck would have it, after just a few hours in the dual tree stand, they started hearing a rustling in the bushes. A group of does appeared and then a buck, but it wasn’t the big guy they were after. Then suddenly the 12-point revealed itself. From about 125 yards, Micalah zeroed in with her Mossberg .243 and Nikon 6×12 power scope.
And of course it was her father who couldn’t keep his composure, at one point even advising her to shoot it from behind, which she didn’t do of course.
“My dad saw him first and I got my gun set,” Micalah told the Tulsa World. “He was a lot more excited than I was. He was kinda freakin’ out, kinda as close to yelling as you can get in a whisper,” she said.
When she hit it, the buck mule-kicked high into the air indicating she landed a good shot. It ran off about 100 yards before pausing. That’s when Micalah got in a final shot for good measure.
For an idea of how to score your deer rack, watch the following video.
