A Virginia hunter who’d never killed a buck before this year shot a public-land monster after moving his setup only minutes into a morning sit. Mark Faulk, 22, of Hanover, Virginia, was hunting from a tree saddle in Caroline County when he downed the 11-point nontypical on Nov. 21 with a Browning AB3 270. Early estimates project a Boone & Crockett score in the 160s.
“In this area, this deer would be considered a giant on public or private land, but especially on public,” Faulk told Field & Stream. “It just exploded on Star City Whitetails, getting over a thousand likes in a couple of hours. Everybody was amazed at how big it was.”
Not only is the buck a giant by Virginia public land standards, Faulk discovered a few hours after the hunt that the deer is the same whitetail he’d been after the year before. He captured three trail camera photos of the buck in 2023, the last in December. This fall his four trail cams turned up no trace of the deer.
“This monster that I had on my trail camera in 2023 was at the top of my list last year, but I thought somebody had already killed him since it’s public land and because I didn’t get any pictures this year,” Faulk says. “I remembered him this year, but I didn’t think I was going to see him.”
Faulk started his morning before dawn on a finger ridge about 300 yards from the area where he photographed the deer last year. He’d never hunted the spot before, and when the sun rose and the breeze picked up, he began to doubt his setup. “I bumped a doe on the way in, and the wind was swirling and carrying my scent right to the trail she used. As the light came up, I saw the cover was a lot thicker than I wanted, so after 15 minutes I decided to move to a nearby spot I hunted the previous year. I knew I could see a lot further and observe more there.”
He pulled down his saddle, found a new tree in his old spot, and settled in. Fifteen minutes later, he heard a deer moving behind him. “It came running in quick and then just stopped,” Faulk recalls. “For maybe two minutes there was no sound, then all of a sudden I heard a loud snort-wheeze.” Thirty seconds later the buck walked out 90 yards away. The deer’s antlers were obscured by cover, but its body left no doubt it was a mature whitetail.
“I had just killed my first buck three weeks earlier, a little 7-pointer, and I could tell this was way bigger: It was a big, square-bodied deer,” Faulk says. “I made up my mind pretty quickly I was going to shoot it.”
The buck ran about 40 yards before keeling over, and Faulk’s first good look at the rack came when he walked up to find it obscured by dirt and limbs: The deer had plowed its antlers into the ground while fleeing. “At first I thought it was a big 6-pointer,” Faulk says. “And when I finally got a look at the entire rack, I was speechless. It just took my words away. I FaceTimed my fiancée to show her the rack, but I couldn’t really talk. I was stunned.”
In all the excitement, Faulk didn’t immediately realize that the deer he's shot was the “monster” he’d photographed the year before. Three hours later he pulled up his 2023 pics. “It was the exact same buck,” he says. “It’s got kickers in the same place. He added one 6-inch point he didn’t have last year, but otherwise the rack looks exactly the same.”
Faulk’s buck is part of a trend of big bucks taken on public ground says Jeff Phillips, who runs Star City Whitetails. “For the past couple decades people in Virginia have vacated public land because so much private land is available to hunt on, and the habitat is thought to be less than desirable on lots of public land,” he says. “But many adventurous hunters these days are finding tremendously mature animals on public land across the Commonwealth simply because of less pressure.”
Adventure is precisely what draws Faulk to public ground, despite having access to nearly 900 acres of private land whenever he wants it.
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“I prefer the adventure of hunting on public land, the thrill of it, and my goal was to kill a big buck on public this year,” says Faulk, who before this season had killed four does in three years of hard hunting. “But I never dreamed I would kill a buck this big."
