Claudette Sansing displays a double handful of the whitetail racks she has collected in Mississippi. Photo by Mike Marsh

There's something satisfying about taking a huge whitetail buck in the closing moments of an extended hunting trip; it feels as if you've milked all the enjoyment out of earning a hard-won trophy. If it's the last day of a season during which you've been in the woods every day, success seems even sweeter. And to ice the cake, the buck is the biggest you've taken after three decades of hunting nearly every day of each season.

"It was one of those deals where you hunted the same places all season," said Claudette Sansing. "We went to the place where we normally hunted squirrels. It was the second to the last day of the season in 1999, and we decided to hunt deer there instead of squirrels. We brought out our climbing stands, and I mentioned to my husband, Barry, that we should have left them there to keep from having to pack them back in the next morning.

"I had seen a spot I wanted to hunt next to a cutover. It was a better place than where I had set up the day before, so I headed there before daylight and set up my climbing tree stand. I saw a doe at 7:15 a.m. As she walked behind me, I turned to make sure she was a doe, and saw a pretty decent buck already standing there. I fired, and he hit the ground and didn't move.

"When I got down to walk over to him, I wasn't really all that excited. But the closer I got, the bigger he looked. He was really a big buck, with wide antlers. Normally, it's the other way around: Bucks seem to be smaller than you thought they were after you walk over to them."

The big 8-pointer weighed 200 pounds. The trophy buck -- which Sansing had mounted so that she could savor in memory every day of a long season crowned by success -- was one of over 50 bucks that the huntress has taken since she began pursuing deer with her brother John R. Hazelwood in 1970.

"He kept trying to get me to go hunting with him in Noxubee County near West Point, where he was a member of a hunting club," Sansing recalled. "He hunted deer mostly by setting up man-drives and dog-drives. I didn't really want to go, but I eventually went to see what it was all about. He was really excited about going deer hunting. After I went the first time, I liked it so much I that I bought a Browning semi-automatic shotgun and started going more often. But it was two years before I shot my first buck."

Sansing was on a hound hunt when a buck tried to sneak away from the commotion of the pack. The dogs were pursuing another deer when the 7-pointer came trotting toward Sansing and skidded to a stop. She raised her gun without hesitation.

"He realized he had messed up when he saw me," she said. "I shot him with a load of buckshot at 35 yards, and he fell right there."

Like all big-game hunters, Sansing has had her ups and downs. She missed some shots at deer during her early hound hunts. But she also had successes as her dedication grew.

After hunting deer at Noxubee County for a few years, Sansing was glad when deer seasons began opening up closer to home in Clay County. "I started hunting with a muzzleloader," she said. "Barry and I bought .54-caliber CVA rifles and loaded them with cast bullets and 90 grains of black powder. I enjoyed shooting the muzzleloader because the fact that I had only one shot made hunting even more exciting."