Preston Allred takes down the Milesville Monster

Milesville Monster green-scored 187 inches

After 3 years of having the “Milesville Monster” on camera, I was finally able to punch a tag on him on Dec. 6, 2022.

In 2020, the first picture of him showed up, but he wasn’t a shooter that year so I decided to let him walk to give him a chance to grow to his full potential in the next couple of years. Then in 2021, I was super excited to see that he had shown back up on camera and showed growth. I had decided to hunt him hard that year because he could have been the biggest deer that I had ever killed.

When he finally started showing up regularly on camera, he broke his right main beam near the base. That year I ended up seeing him just about every time I hunted that stand. Then this year, he showed back up on camera on Oct. 11. He made his appearance every day for a week straight with no daylight pictures, and then he disappeared until Nov. 18.

When he showed back up in November I decided to hunt him hard. I hunted him consistently for 2 weeks with no luck and decided to give him a break. He was still showing up on camera, but only in the middle of the night and early morning.

On Dec. 5, he showed up on camera at 6:30 p.m. with a group of does. On Dec. 6, I called my buddy, Dylan, to see where he thought we should hunt that evening. I wanted to go shoot a couple of does, but Dylan convinced me to give the “Milesville Monster” another shot that evening because the wind and weather were going to be perfect.

When we showed up to the stand at 3 p.m., the wind had changed directions, but we decided to take a chance. Once we sat down and got settled in for about an hour it started raining. At that point, we had lost complete hope. At 5:05 p.m., a spike had come out and it was acting a bit skittish, but I reassured Dylan that I see that spike every time I hunt that stand and he always acts the same.

Dylan spotted another deer in the distance. He pulled up his Swarovski binoculars to get a better look. At this point, the spike had spooked and I looked over at Dylan as he lowered his binoculars and he said “it’s him.”

My heart immediately started pounding and I began shaking. Dylan kept saying “shoot him,” but I couldn’t see him good enough to get a shot on him. He ended up making a circle and he finally crossed into the shooting lane where I could get a good look at him.

I took a deep breath and got settled in and took the shot. He ran, and we decided it would be best to let him sit for a bit. So we left and came back about an hour later. He didn’t run more than 70 yards and there laid the “Milesville Monster.”

At this point in time, it really set in that I had just killed a buck of a lifetime scoring 187!

–Preston Allred

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