14-year-old Bags Potential Oklahoma Women’s Record Buck
OutdoorHub Reporters 10.22.15
Fourteen-year-old Micalah Millard of Skiatook, Oklahoma has been hunting every year since she was six, but last weekend she harvested her biggest buck yet—and it just may be a new state record.
The Tulsa World reported that Millard shot a long-tined buck while hunting with her father on a family ranch in McIntosh County that scored an impressive 187 and 1/8 inches. That green score put Millard’s deer straight into the state’s top five bucks, and could make it the largest buck ever harvested by a woman in Oklahoma.
Millard said she did not expect to see the giant buck show up on Saturday.
“We were in the stand a couple of hours when we kept hearing something moving in the wood line, just pacing back and forth,” she told the World. “My dad saw him first and I got my gun set. 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.”
Millard and her father had seen the buck before. It showed up in several of the images their trail cam took and appeared to have been following a group of does in the area. What was strange was that nobody had seen the buck before and no one knew where it came from. After what had been a slow morning hunt, Millard and her father were elated when the massive buck they had seen on the trail cam photos walked towards their stand.
“I’ve hunted for years and years and never seen anything like that,” her father, Malachi Millard, told News 9.
It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but the seasoned hunter said his daughter handled it perfectly. Micalah recalls letting the animal come within 125 yards before making a broadside shot on its lungs. The buck ran for about 100 yards and then keeled over before it could reach the treeline.
“My dad’s expression, whenever we saw it drop, he looked at me and goes, ‘Oh my gosh, look at me. I’m shaking.’ He goes, ‘No, really, look. I’m shaking.’ He was really excited,” the young hunter recalled. “I was more surprised.”
Initial measurements of the rack put the deer as the fourth largest typical whitetail deer taken in the state. If its measurements hold up, it is also the largest ever shot by a woman hunter in Oklahoma. The deer still has to be certified by record-keeping organizations such as the Boone and Crockett Club, but Malachi Millard says they already received invitations to appear at several national hunting events. As for the animal itself, the rack is awaiting the services of a taxidermist and the meat has been donated to low-income families in McIntosh County.
You can watch an interview with Micalah below:
News9.com – Oklahoma City, OK – News, Weather, Video and Sports |
