170+ Monroe County Buck Downed By 12 Year Old

Jackson Stonecipher with a 170-inch-plus buck from Monroe County. Photo Credit: Mark Wooley from 4S.

Like many Georgia pre-teens, 12-year-old Jackson Stonecipher couldn’t wait for the start of the state’s gun season. The seventh grader had a special reason to be excited. His dad, Alex, said the monstrous buck they were seeing on their Monroe County farm all summer would be his for the taking. This was a buck that had caught the attention of many south Monroe County hunters, including a neighbor whom the Stoneciphers enjoyed swapping stories of the sightings they all had of this special buck over the seasons of its life.

Two days before Hurricane Helene hit, that neighbor would have some devastating news.

“He said that he had seen the buck with an arrow protruding from its front shoulder,” Alex said. “He said someone had shot it, and it didn’t look like it was doing well.”

“We didn’t see the buck we had been seeing almost every day again. We assumed it was dead.”

Jackson was crushed. He would still hunt, but the excitement of opening day was gone. In fact, he decided to focus on finishing soccer season and some other things before visiting the tree-house-turned-deer-stand overlooking a cow pasture they had made into a food plot to attract deer.

On Oct. 16, a month after Hurricane Helene had roared through, the father and son finally went hunting. They sat and watched seven does until almost dark. Suddenly, a buck appeared. Its body was much too small to be the buck-of-a-lifetime Jackson had dreamed about all summer, but from 170 yards away and in the fading light, they could see it had a rack.

Jackson carefully lined up the sights of a 6.5 Grendel and pulled the trigger. The buck fell.

Much to their astonishment, when they checked the buck, it was the monstrous buck they had seen all summer. The arrow their neighbor had seen weeks before still protruded from the shoulder. It had lost a large amount of weight. It was in sad shape. Its wound was badly infected. Jackson had put it out of its misery and taken a buck of a lifetime with one shot.

A scorer with Buckmasters identified 16 scorable points. The buck had a gross score of 171 7/8 inches.

After the 60-day required drying period, Jackson can have his buck scored by a B&C scorer and entered into GON’s Georgia Deer Records program.

As for Jackson, he feels blessed that he was able to get the buck he had been hoping for all summer and looks forward to the possibilities ahead of him as a young hunter.

When Jackson took the big buck, it had an arrow in its back that had created a bad infection. The had lost considerable weight. Photo Credit: Mark Wooley from 4S

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