Dennis Lawson’s massive Appalachian whitetail scored a whopping 183 inches—a giant anywhere, let alone on public land. (Photo courtesy of Dennis Lawson)
June 25, 2025
By Doug Howlett
For all the big buck stories we hear, very few hunters will ever see a 180-inch whitetail while hunting—much less kill one. If you hunt only public land, particularly public land in the East, your odds of seeing or killing such a brute is virtually nil. That doesn’t mean it never happens, though. Just ask Dennis Lawson of Sword’s Creek, Va., who last fall pulled off the public-land whitetail hunter’s equivalent of winning the Powerball lottery.
Lawson, a fit 53-year-old tree cutter who runs his own business in the Appalachian Mountains of far western Virginia, was hunting a remote drainage in the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests in Bath County in early November. It was opening day of the statewide two-week muzzleloader season, which runs just before firearms season and offers Virginia deer hunters arguably the best opportunity to get a buck. There are fewer hunters in the woods than there are during the general gun season, and the rut is wide open with bucks on the hoof at all hours of the day.
Lawson had split off from some friends he was hunting with that morning and was easing along through a deep creek bottom in a valley he has hunted many times.
The George Washington and Jefferson National Forests compose a stunningly beautiful, if extremely challenging, place to chase deer. (Shutterstock photo) “The area has been cut several times since I have been hunting it,” Lawson says. “The mountain slopes and ridge tops have grown up thick, so the only way to really hunt it is to work the drainages and creek bottoms.”
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It was almost 7:30. The sun had been up for a short while, and he was about 2 miles from where he had parked and left the others. Lawson was moving slowly so he wouldn’t make any more noise than necessary in the crunchy, newly fallen leaves when he spotted a flash of movement up ahead. His heart jumped as he tried to pull the movement into focus.
“I was trying to get a glimpse over this hill when suddenly I saw something moving. It made my heart jump. But just as I was trying to make out exactly what it was, a squirrel ran up a tree,” he says. “I felt like a dummy.”
Just a squirrel—not a deer as his imagination had led him to hope. Every deer hunter has been there.
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But then Lawson heard leaves crunching. Something up ahead was walking—something much bigger than a squirrel. The sound of a stick breaking preceded several deep grunts.
“They were the deepest grunts I have ever heard,” he recalls. The hunter remained motionless. He was peering between two trees when the buck stepped into view a mere 70 yards away through the open woods.
“I shot and the buck took off,” Lawson says. “He was quartering to me, and I hit him a little farther back in the ribs than I had intended.”
The buck’s rack is full of unique characteristics, perhaps none more so than the bladed and split brow tines. (Photo courtesy of Dennis Lawson) The buck bounded away as Lawson quickly and nervously reloaded. Ready to take another shot if he got the chance, he dashed to a hilltop where he could see into the drainage better and soon spotted the wounded buck still on its feet. “I was able to get another shot into him. This time he was quartering away,” Lawson says. The buck ran another 30 yards and collapsed.
Lawson was awestruck as he approached the buck. He couldn’t believe the size of the brute’s antlers.
“I just walked circles around him looking at him from every angle, and he just seemed to get bigger and bigger,” he recalls. Lawson, who has hunted elk and mule deer out West and can appreciate what big antlers look like, said the buck is by far the biggest deer he has ever killed. In a video of the hunter packing out the meat and antlers of the buck, the rack on Lawson’s back looks like it belonged to a mule deer.
Maybe more amazingly, it wasn’t the first time Lawson had encountered the public-land buck.
“I shot at and missed the same buck four years earlier,” Lawson says. “He was a big buck back then.”
That first encounter occurred during the general firearms season. Lawson was toting a .270 and paused to take a break when the buck appeared.
“I was just resting a second, leaning against an old pine tree. I still had my pack on my back when I heard something coming off a hill. It was coming down the hill right at me but from behind,” he remembers. “I had to turn at an awkward angle and shoot from that position.”
Half lying dowin, half twisting around, Lawson put the crosshairs on the buck, which at that point was about 100 yards out and moving almost parallel to him. He squeezed off a shot but missed.
“He ran over a ridge, but I was able to move on him and shoot again,” Lawson says. “Every time I shot, I missed. He would run a little farther and then stop, and I would shoot again.”
Lawson was 2 miles from where he’d parked, resulting in a somewhat arduous packout through the rugged terrain. (Photo courtesy of Dennis Lawson) In all, Lawson shot at the buck four times, missing him cleanly with each shot. But with the Thompson/Center Omega inline muzzleloader in hand last fall, there was no missing. Lawson’s initial shot and follow-up both found their mark. There was no questioning it was the same buck. It had the same frame and distinctive brow tines. It was just bigger—much bigger. The buck scored 183 inches.
“You don’t kill a lot of 180s on public land,” Lawson says. “I should’ve played the lottery later that day.”
Lawson notes he hunted in that same drainage four times and killed four bucks consecutively. None of them were smaller than an 8-point, but this one was obviously the biggest.
“It’s just a good area,” Lawson says. For public land, that’s an understatement as immense as the buck itself.
This article was featured in the 2024 issue of Public Land Hunter magazine.
