On Friday, August 16, the state of Virginia handed down penalties in a months-long poaching case involving a 29-point whitetail buck known for roaming the grounds of the historic Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. Thirty-six-year-old Jason Walters pled guilty to 20 misdemeanors in the case, which has now landed him a six-month jail sentence, three months probation, a 24-year hunting ban, and more than $13,000 in fines. His alleged accomplice in the crimes, Richmond resident Allan Proffitt, will serve 30 days of house arrest, pay $1,200 in fines, and see his hunting privileges revoked for six years.
Walters grabbed the public's attention last December when he sent photos of himself posing in front of an impressive whitetail to Jeff Phillips—a southwest Virginia realtor with Whitetail Properties who runs the popular Star City Whitetails Facebook page. He told Phillips he'd shot the deer in Prince Edwards County, about 70 miles away from Richmond. Phillips shared the images with his 78,000 followers, and the post quickly went viral.
Social Media Helped Solve the Case
Phillips didn't recognize the enormous buck that Walters sent him in a direct Facebook message on Dec. 14, 2023, but many of his Star City Whitetail followers did, and the comments came pouring in almost instantly.
"One of my followers sent me a picture taken by a local wildlife photographer that looked exactly like the buck," Phillips tells Field & Stream. "My heart kind of sank. I sent [Walters] back a message that said: 'Hey, that's that Hollywood Buck.' He just said: 'Huh? I killed it at my hunting club this morning.'"
Facebook users familiar with the so-called Hollywood Buck continued posting pictures they'd seen of the massive whitetail while it was alive, comparing its rack to the grip-and-grins Walters had submitted to Star City Whitetails. The resemblance was undeniable.
Most of the live photos of the Hollywood Buck were taken by Richmond-based wildlife photographer Bill Draper. Draper tells F&S that he photographed the deer for years and watched its rack go from as much as 230 inches in past seasons to the roughly 200-inch frame it was when Walters poached it last winter. He says the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR) used some of his pictures during its investigation to positively identify the deer in Walters' Star City Whitetails photos as the Hollywood Buck.
"The thing was just absolutely insane a couple years ago, and then this last year when it was shot, it was no longer at its peak—as far as its antlers," he says. "I was still getting a lot of pictures of it until last fall, and then it just disappeared."
Walters Killed Multiple Other Hollywood Cemetery Bucks
As evidence that Walters had shot the Hollywood Buck mounted in the comment section of the Star City Whitetails Facebook post, tipsters began alerting the Virginia DWR. Within an hour of his Dec. 14 Facebook post showing Walters posing with the Hollywood Buck, the DWR called Phillips for more information. On, December 18, 2023, just four days after Phillips shared the photos, the agency released a statement about the case.
"Conservation Police Officers from the Virginia [DWR] Law Enforcement Division have identified suspects in the case of a well-known white-tailed buck illegally killed recently," the press release reads. "Charges are pending, and the investigation is ongoing."
The release went on to state that one of the suspects "sent photos of himself with the nontypical 29-point buck to a Facebook page, claiming to have killed the buck in Prince Edward County, Virginia, with a muzzleloader"—and that "members of the hunting and wildlife viewing communities alerted DWR Law Enforcement that they recognized the buck pictured as one that frequented the Hollywood Cemetery in the Oregon Hill neighborhood of Richmond, expressing concern that the buck had been killed illegally."
Walters was arrested on January 28, 2024 on charges that also linked him to the illegal-killing of two other bucks known to live in and around the Hollywood Cemetery. Phillips says he received and posted photos of all three bucks that Walters poached during Virginia's 2023 deer season, not knowing at the time that they hadn't been taken legally.
The other bucks didn't draw scrutiny, Phillips says, until after he shared photos of the Hollywood Buck. "He was only congratulated for the first two deer," says Phillips. "Had he not sent that third buck, he might have never been exposed. I don't think anyone would have put two and two together."
Draper photographed a tall-tined 8-pointer that Walters later poached and sent to Phillips for posting on Star City Whitetails as well. Those pictures were also taken on property owned by the Hollywood Cemetery, he says. "I was always careful not to post the exact location of these bucks when I shared images online because I was worried about something like this happening," Draper says. "These deer were tame. I could get within 50 to 75 yards of them to take pictures pretty easily."
The details of how Walters and Proffitt worked together to poach deer in the populated urban environment around Richmond are still murky. Though Walters claimed to have shot the Hollywood Buck with a 50 Caliber muzzleloader in his Facebook messages to Phillips, it's highly unlikely that he could have fired such a weapon in the area without alerting nearby residents.
"Any gun going off in that area would have gotten him caught pretty quickly," says Phillips. "I'm assuming he probably used a crossbow, or maybe a rifle with a suppressor." Virginia DWR did not immediately respond with more information when contacted by Field & Stream.
