What started out as a slow hunting season for a teenager in Mississippi took a positive turn on December 10th when the 14-year-old, Neely Jordan, bagged an eight-point trophy buck in LeFlore County.
Jordan was with her mom, Kristi, in a box stand around 2:45 pm on a family friend’s property. Within 15 minutes, the pair saw two does wander onto their stretch of land, making their way closer to the stand. While Neely was paying close attention to the does, Kristi spotted the buck in the tree line.
“We’re sitting in the stand and two does had been behind us forever,” Kristi said in the Clarion Ledger. “I just looked in front of me and I saw him.”
The mother/daughter duo tracked the 140 class buck until they found the right moment for Neely to take her shot. By 4:15 pm, an excited teen and a proud mom had garnered their first kill of the season.
Kristi, an avid hunter herself, was happy to help her daughter bag the trophy on this outing.
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“I thought he was a pretty good deer, so I got my binoculars,” Kristi said. “I saw he was a nice buck. I told her if he stopped and she could steady the gun and felt comfortable, she could shoot him.”
According to Neely in an interview with MS-Sportsman, her mother guided her in taking the right shot.
“My mom told me to get set up once he went behind a tree” Neely said. “She told me to only take the shot if he walked out into the field, and sure enough, he did.”
At first, Neely had trouble seeing the buck as he weaved in and out of the tree line. Finally, he walked briskly into the open field while foraging for food. Once Neely saw him, she faced another problem – his pace.
“He was walking pretty fast and I thought he was just going to go back into the woods,” Neely said.
Since the deer was moving so fast, Neely didn’t have time to hesitate or get nervous.
“Finally, he stopped and started working his scrape. I put the crosshairs on him and pulled the trigger. He fell to the ground,” recalled Neely.
“We were both so excited. After I shot him, I was shaking because I was so excited, and my mom was cheering for me because she was so happy,” she continued.
Neely Jordan comes from a long line of hunting and outdoor enthusiast. Her grandfather, Robert Neely, was a Mississippi game warden for over thirty years. Both her parents and her brother are enthusiastic hunters as well.
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