“I’ve shot deer out to 444 yards with my .243,” says Garland, who took her first deer 20 years ago at age 10. “We hunt the big open fields in the South Delta, and my .243 is the perfect rifle.”
She shoots a custom-built Remington 700 bolt-action rifle with a special aftermarket barrel and hand loads her .243 ammo using 105-grain bullets.
“I’ve shot it a lot over the years, and my Burris Eliminator laser rangefinding scope helps in judging yardage and makes my .243 the perfect gun for me,” she says.
Victoria’s husband, Thomas Garland, began getting trail photos of a large farm buck he’d passed the previous season because of a broken tine. By Dec. 2021, the buck had returned to their 1,200-acre farm, and on Christmas Day, Thomas got a long shot at the buck but missed.
Two days later, Victoria was hunting in a box blind during an unusually warm December afternoon. She thought she should be sitting poolside instead of in a deer stand when she happened to look up to see a giant buck. She instantly recognized it from trail cam photos as the deer Thomas missed.
She got on the buck, standing 173 yards away, and shot … but the deer didn’t move. So she chambered a second round, aimed, and fired again. The buck turned and ran, showing no sign of being hit. Checking where the buck stood, she found no blood trail to follow. So the Garlands got their trusty two-year-old black Labrador, Maverick, to trail the deer.
“Maverick got on the scent right away and went to the buck,” says Victoria. “There was no blood to follow, and the deer only went 100 yards. Thank goodness for Maverick.”
My congratulations to Victoria in our great Mississippi outdoors!!!
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