For most hunters, a 140 class buck is a once in a lifetime deer. For Mississippi wildlife biologist and hardcore hunter Caroline Winters, it is part of a bigger story about patience, discipline, and a calendar date she now treats like a holiday.
For three straight seasons, November 23 has turned into a trophy buck magnet for the Winters family.
The success on this date isn’t due to luck. More like woodsmanship, patience, and proper management. And to understand how November 23 became their family’s defining day in the deer woods, you have to look back at the long, stressful gamble that started it all.
Managing For Age, Not Just Antlers
Caroline is not just another deer hunter with a good trail cam. She is a wildlife biologist with the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks, and she looks at bucks through a different lens than most folks.
On the family ground in Mississippi, they run cameras, not just to see big bucks, but to separate young deer with potential from their true targets. They’re serious about letting younger deer walk, even when the antlers look tempting.
This fall, that system put her face to face with a wary, old buck that looked old enough for the hit list.
They started picking him up on cameras in October, mostly on scrapes. The pictures were nearly all at night, and he rarely stepped into open ground during daylight. They could tell from the limited daylight shots that he was no spring chicken. And age, for Caroline, means green light.
Two Encounters, No Shot
By late November, gun season had opened and Caroline was living the split life many hunters know: work by day, hunt every minute she could spare.
On opening afternoon, November 22, she slipped into a food plot stand after work. It did not take long for a buck with tall antlers to slide through the edges. Twice she got glimpses. Twice he stayed in cover just thick enough that she couldn’t tell if he was her target buck.
She had the crosshairs on him, but backed off. In her mind, if she was going to end the story of this deer, she wanted to be certain it was the same old buck from the photos.
“I just wanted to be dang sure it was the deer I was thinking of,” Caroline said.
The next morning she shifted into the woods instead of hunting the field. The rut was heating up and the woods put on a show. From daylight until mid morning, bucks chased does non stop. They responded to rattling and rolled out of nearby cutover like they were ready to fight.
When a tall tined buck finally came to the edge of a cutover, it looked promising, but again the angle and distance kept her from aging it precisely. At roughly 200 yards, the deer checked things out, decided something was off, and quietly walked away.
“He was probably 200 yards from me,” Caroline said. “He was smart. He didn’t see any other bucks and he turned and walked away.”
Caroline had a gun in her hand, rutting bucks in front of her, with chances to shoot. Both times she wisely chose caution over impulse.
The Third Time Is The Charm
That afternoon she was back on a food plot. The wind was not perfect, so she made the call to close the shooting house windows to keep her scent inside as much as possible. It might keep the deer from winding her, but it also meant she would have to gamble on opening a window if a buck showed up at close range.
Inside that little box, it felt like an oven. She joked that she was cooking like a rotisserie chicken, but she stuck with the plan.
A doe eventually fed out into the plot just a few yards in front of the stand. Shadowed behind her was a big nine point, tall and heavy. The buck stopped to work a scrape, hanging up behind the doe.
Caroline found herself in a bad spot. If she opened the window, the doe would likely blow out of there and take the buck with her. If she did not open it, she had no shot at all.
“I had to do what I had to do and hope for the best,” Caroline said. “There was only one thing to do and that was lower the window.”
As she eased the window down, the doe spooked and bounded off. The buck, incredibly, held his ground. He turned broadside instead of following her, and that was the only green light she needed. She settled the crosshairs and dropped him right there.
The buck carried main beams of 19-6/8 inches and 20-5/8 inches, stout bases, and enough tine length to push a gross score of 142-4/8. He was not her highest scoring deer on paper, but he was the exact mature, management style buck she tries to target.
All of this went down on November 23rd.
The First Gamble: A 190 Class Giant
Two years earlier, that same date had already carved its place in her hunting memory.
Back in 2023, Caroline had rolled the dice on a young but impressive ten point living on a small, 80 acre tract. At three years old he was already flirting with the 140s. Most hunters would have dropped him on sight. Instead she, her husband, and her dad made a deliberate choice to let him walk, hoping he could reach full maturity.
They all knew the risk. On ground that small, a buck like that does not stay hidden forever. Any neighbor who got a clean look at him would likely pull the trigger. Thankfully, they stayed patient.
The following year he jumped into the 160s, then finally exploded into a main frame giant by the time he hit five years old. By then, his rack looked like it belonged in a magazine.
Caroline and Rick hunted him hard, piling up stand time and close calls, including encounters during archery season where he stayed just out of bow range. But it all came together during a sit after Thanksgiving lunch.
“I was texting back and forth with Rick and I saw him step out of the woods,” Caroline said. Honestly, my biggest feeling was, ‘Don’t mess this up. I didn’t want to miss him or wound him and make him suffer.
She talked herself through the moment, forcing herself not to rush the shot. She waited until the crosshairs felt right, squeezed the trigger, and watched him run out of sight.
Her husband and father joined the tracking job. For a few tense minutes the blood trail faded and doubt crept in. She was already talking about backing out and calling for a tracking dog when her dad suddenly spotted the buck only 70 yards away.
The 191-inch giant she had hunted so patiently for three years was finally in her hands.
Finally, on November 23rd.
Her Husband Makes it Happen
In 2024, that date proved its power again when her husband, Rick, shot a 175 inch buck on November 23. Three consecutive seasons, three giant deer tagged by the Winters family on the same square on the calendar.
By the time Caroline closed the deal on her 140 class old warrior in 2025, she already had a running joke about where she would be every year on that day.
“For the rest of my life I will be hunting on November 23,” she says. “That is where I will be, in the woods.”
Behind the joke is a serious point for southern deer hunters. Those three bucks were not accidents. They were the product of discipline, management, and the courage to let young buck with potential walk. The dates, the scores, and the inches make for great headlines, but the real story is in the years of decision making that came before each shot.
For a lot of folks scrolling Facebook, it is easy to see a 190, a 175, and a 140 and chalk it up to luck. Caroline’s story shows a different picture. Luck may decide some things, but restraint, woodmanship, and a long term mindset give that luck a lot more chances to show up.
And if you are hunting in Mississippi on November 23rd, you might want to pick your stand carefully. The Winters family already has dibs.
