Missouri Man Shoots A 170-Class Buck On His Own Property

Jonah Duckworth / Facebook

38-year-old Jonah Duckworth has owned a 246-acre farm in Saint James, Missouri for the past 12 years, and during a hunt this past November, he scored a 170-Class buck.

Jonah told Outdoor Life that he has been hunting since he was 13 years old and still spends an excessive amount of his own time tracking and hunting whitetail deer.

He says he also does it with his wife and other family members to spend time bonding with them in nature and teach them valuable survival skills. With trail cams placed around his property, he has captured many big bucks on video and even killed a few visiting his land.

The three biggest bucks his family has ever come across, however, were on the 40-acre tract of land he lives on and he has a series of trail camera photos showing the 170-inch deer.

He first spotted the 13-pointer on camera the day before this year’s fall firearms season opened up and his wife Kathy hunted for the deer the first week with no luck.

He said she did shoot a nice doe on at the end of the week she was happy about.

The next week, Jonah decided to hunt in the same area his wife did and he found a big oak tree to lean his back up against and hunt from the ground.

It was early in the morning and he made a series of deer calls of grunting, doe-bleating, and then grunting again around 9:50am.

Not long after that, he heard a deer approaching his direction at a quick speed and he was laying on his side. He slowly rolled over and sat up and spotted the deer coming towards him at about 100 yards away.

“It was coming toward me at a fast trot and I only had a 10-foot window to shoot him in,” Jonah said. “I threw up my rifle and could see that it was the buck we’d been after.”

He placed the deer in the crosshairs of his 6.5 Creedmoor and blasted off a round hitting the animal. It ran off about 55 yards before it dropped dead.

As he measured it, the deer had 4 4/8 inches of mass from its bases to between the second and third points. Its longest tine is an 11-inch G3 and the total score for the typical buck was 173 5/8 inches.

 “I was super excited to kill such a great buck,” he added. “The only downfall is that my wife really wanted to shoot it.” 

Read Jonah’s Public Statement Below