This season, Louisiana produced some bucks that would make any hunter weak in the knees. Here are the stories.
Big bucks fell across the state this season as cooler winter weather seemed to really get deer moving. Here are the stories of some of the year’s biggest bucks.40-acre beast.
Mike Chapman doesn’t have access to a huge lease. In fact, he spends his time afield on a small patch of woods in West Carroll Parish that’s owned by a friend.“I’ve been hunting it for years,” the Oak Ridge hunter said. “It’s only 40 acres, but it backs up to two other pieces of woods.”
And while Chapman knew there were some good deer in the area, he didn’t know exactly how large. All he had to go on were scrapes and hookings.
“I don’t have any cameras out,” he said.
Big deer weren’t what he was really after anyway, so he never worried about antler size.
“I’m all about putting deer in the deep freeze,” Chapman said. “I’ve never really hunted horns.”
On Dec. 28, Chapman climbed into a box stand situated on the property line and overlooking two shooting lanes. He sat watching as sunlight began chasing darkness away, hoping he could pad his meat supply.
Just before 7 a.m., he noticed movement on one of the lanes.
“The lane goes about 120 yards and ends in some saplings,” he said. “The deer came right out at the end of the lane, and walked straight to me.”
Chapman almost passed out when he saw the rack crowning the big-bodied deer.
“I had to get my eyes off his horns,” he said. “He had me messed up — I hadn’t been like that in a long time.”
The antlers were simply massive, with points everywhere Chapman looked.
The hunter quickly shouldered his .45-70, and almost pulled the trigger to take a head-on shot.
“I told myself, ‘Just wait a few seconds,’” Chapman said. “I kept telling myself that he had to turn to the left or right to get back in the woods.”
That self-control paid off when the deer quartered to its left, and Chapman touched off a shot.
The deer bolted, but didn’t hunch up or jump as expected.
“I thought I missed the deer, really and truly, because I saw the bullet splash in the grass on the other side of the deer,” Chapman said. “I was sick.”
Adrenaline still pumped through his body as he quickly climbed down to check for blood. As he eased down the lane, Chapman heard a welcome sound.
“I heard him take his last breath, and then I started running,” he said.
The deer, which weighed about 250 pounds, had taken a small side lane Chapman had cut and fallen only 30 yards from where it had been hit.
Chapman pulled up short for a moment when he got his first close-up glimpse of the rack, and then he went into full celebration mode.
“I was jumping up and down,” he said. “I was really excited. I was looking around to see if anybody was watching me.
“I knew he was a good deer, but I didn’t know it was nothing like this.”
The buck’s rack encompassed 18 ½ inches of air, but it was mass and number of points that struck Chapman.
“He’s got 23 total points,” he said. “The bases are almost 6 inches, but it holds almost 5 inches all the way to the end (of the main beam).”
Chapman began calling friends, a move that slowed down the cleaning of the buck.
“It took me two hours to skin the deer,” he chuckled. “People kept walking up wanting pictures of it.”
Once the deer was finally cleaned, Chapman hurried to Simmons Sporting Goods in Bastrop to enter the company’s big-buck contest. Turns out there really was no contest.
“They scored it as a typical 17-point,” Chapman said.
Simmons Sporting Goods taped the deer at 204 Boone & Crockett points, putting it squarely on the top of the board in the muzzleloader and Louisiana overall categories.
Even more importantly, it makes it a contender for the top spot in the all-time state record, if the green score stands up.
The current state-record typical deer was killed in 1943 by Don Broadway, and measured 184 6/8 inches B&C.
Protein power
Batchelor’s Jeffery Newton started seeing a big buck on his trail cam on Nov. 19, and it was one he’d never seen before.
“He just popped up out of nowhere,” Newton said. “I can’t say, ‘Here’s the deer from last year.’”
The die-hard bowhunter can only figure that a change in his management plan paid quick dividends on his Avoyelles Parish lease.
“I put out three feeders, and started pouring the high-protein feed to them (last) February,” Newton explained. “I put 500 pounds of that protein Gremillion Feed in Simmesport sells in each of the feeders.”
He couldn’t afford to continue that feeding regimen, but Newton still believes it’s that dose of high-protein food that was responsible for such a monster deer suddenly appearing.
“I figured this deer was in the mid 150s,” Newton said. “That would make it the biggest taken from the place.”
The first three pictures of the deer came from a 16-acre cutover, but hunting that area was out.
“A crew came in and began working an oil rig (next to the cutover) for eight to 10 days, and that was it,” he explained. “No more pictures.”
And then, half a mile away, another camera began picking up the buck on a regular basis along the edge of another cutover.
“He was coming to a feeder three times a day in a 24-hour period,” Newton said. “I guess he was trying to put the weigh on before the rut.”
The photos allowed Newton to put a game plan together, since each shot of the deer showed it walking to the feeder from the same direction.
He set up a stand, and waited until the wind was blowing away from the deer’s trail.
The afternoon of Dec. 4, Newton’s fourth attempt, proved to be perfect.
“He popped out about 80 yards just before dark,” the hunter said. “I picked my glasses up, and almost fell out of my stand.”
The deer’s rack was monstrous, a lot bigger than it appeared in photos.
“I just misjudged this deer,” Newton said.
Adrenaline blasted through Newton’s veins, but the deer was walking very slowly so there wasn’t a rush to get a shot.
“I had enough time to gain my composure,” Newton said.
The only problems were the quickly fading light and the fact that, even at 16 yards, the deer was facing directly toward the hunter.
Newton silently prayed he’d have enough light to place his pin on the deer when it offered a shot: Finally, the deer turned toward the feeder, offering a quartering-away shot.
An arrow hissed, and Newton saw a satisfying jump.
“I figured I shot him through the heart,” he said.
Newton immediately climbed down and started text-messaging two of his cousins hunting on the other side of the lease.
“I looked for the arrow, but I couldn’t find it,” Newton said. “My heart sank right there.”
However, about 15 steps later, small drops of blood could be seen on the ground.
“Another 10 steps and I found what looked like good blood,” he said. “So I backed out.”
Newton waited three hours for a buddy to arrive from Alexandria, and the group of men returned to the area about 9:15 p.m.
“We went 30 yards from where I saw the blood, and found my arrow,” Newton said.
It didn’t take long to round up his trophy, and the hunters were stunned at what they saw.
“For the first time in my life, (the rack) increased because of his mass,” Newton said. “We misjudged the deer by about 15 inches of mass.”
The deer was a mainframe 10-point with a 2½-inch sticker protruding from one brow tine. The inside spread of the 26-inch main beams stretched to 19 5/8 inches, and the G2s and G3s each surpassed the 10-inch mark.
The deer was greenscored by the Department of Wildlife & Fisheries’ Lt. Col. Keith LaCaze at 178 7/8 Pope & Young, with a net of 167 4/8 P&Y.
Newton said the hunt was made even better because he had friends and family to share the thrill of discovery.
“A lot of times, I hunt by myself, but having everyone there really made this special,” he said.
The hunt also proved his management plan a success, so by the time this article is printed, Newton will be pouring protein into his feeders again in hopes of reproducing that success.
“The deer was young,” he said. “It was only 4½ years old. That’s what really blows my mind. This deer had to eat a lot of that protein I put out to grow antlers like that at 4½ years old.”
Military buck
Shreveport’s Maynard Guelich is retired from the U.S. Air Force, and that gives him certain privileges — such as hunting on Barksdale Air Force Base.
“You have to be a member of the military, retired military or family of a military member,” Guelich said.
The base is huge, and holds a good population of deer. But it’s much like hunting a state wildlife refuge — hunters pretty much have to do what they can to get away from and work around each other.
So on Nov. 10, when Guelich found a well-used trail of deer tracks along the edge of a cutover, he figured he had stumbled onto something worth hunting.
“The tracks were coming from the woods to the cutover,” he said. “So I hunted it that afternoon, but I didn’t see anything.”
Really, the only thing he saw were some raccoons messing around and making noise.
The following morning, however, Guelich returned and waited as the sun rose.
“I was just sitting there, and I thought I heard some squirrels,” he said. “I figured that was the raccoons coming back.”
When the troop of bandits didn’t show up, Guelich snuck a glance behind him.
“I didn’t see anything, but I heard a snap,” he said.
He turned to his right, and caught movement in the chest-high cutover.
“I saw horns,” Guelich said. “I thought, ‘What the heck?’ and they disappeared.”
The hunter searched the thicket, and soon enough the antlers popped back up again. He quickly saw that the buck would meet the base’s minimum-antler requirement.
“I could only see the four points on one side, and I said, ‘That’s a shooter,’” he said.
Guelich pulled up his muzzleloader, and followed the antlers in hopes that the deer would step into the clear.
“It came out in an opening, and turned to me at about 40 yards,” he said.
The hunter waited nervously as the buck moseyed toward him slowly. Guelich didn’t want to take the chance that he’d miss a facing shot.
“At 25 yards, he turned broadside, but I couldn’t get a shot before he got into the bushes again,” he said.
The hunter spotted a small opening in the thicket just ahead of the buck, and aimed his rifle there, praying that the deer wouldn’t deviate.
“I was talking to myself, saying, ‘Line up the (open) sights. Squeeze the trigger,’” Guelich said.
And then the buck stepped into the opening.
“I said, ‘It’s now or never,’” Guelich said.
When the rifle exploded, the deer was gone in an instant.
“I see all this smoke, and I couldn’t see what happened to the deer,” he laughed. “I just kept trying to see through the smoke.”
The smoke from the burned powder finally began to lift as Guelich’s anxiety soared, but his worry was for naught.
“When the smoke cleared, it was laying right there,” he said.
The buck wasn’t quite dead, so Guelich watched as it kicked.
“I called a buddy, and he told me to just wait,” he said. “He told me I might want to reload my muzzleloader, which was a good idea.”
After 20 minutes, the deer had gone still. Guelich climbed out of the stand, and eased up to it.
“I couldn’t see the horns on one side,” he said. “When I lifted (the rack) up, all these horns came up.”
The buck sported 13 scorable points (and one other that would hold a ring) arrayed around a 19½-inch frame.
Guelich couldn’t believe it, and he immediately tried to pull it out of the woods.
“I started dragging it, and I dragged it about 10 feet,” he laughed. “I couldn’t get it out by myself.”
The buck eventually was taken to a check station, where it weighed in at 215 pounds, and Simmons Sporting Goods later greenscored the deer at 170 2/8 B&C.
I’m-too-sick-to-bowhunt buck
Tommy Messina has hunted a particular piece of Tensas Parish property for more than 15 years, and he’s shot a lot of deer. But he’d yet to drop the hammer on one of the bucks roaming the area.
“I’ve passed on a lot of bucks in the 130 to 150 (Boone & Crockett) range,” the Baton Rouge hunter said. “A shooter buck has to be 5½ years or older and over 150 (inches).”
Added to that inherent difficulty was the fact that Messina and the others on the property mostly use bows, and the result is pretty low odds of knocking down a shooter.
But there are plenty of does, and the hunters get to watch a lot of big bucks, so they persevere.
On Nov. 24, however, Messina decided to forego his bow.
“I was sick, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to bowhunt blowing my nose,” he said. “So I took my .45-70, and started walking down one of the (logging) roads.”
The goal was to slip along the trail cutting between a cutover and a stand of big timber.
“I was just going to shoot does I jumped up,” Messina said.
When he reached a box stand, however, the hunter made a snap decision.
“I decided to climb up in the stand and see what happened,” he said.
At about 4:30 p.m., only an hour or so after taking the stand, Messina caught movement less than 120 yards away.
“He just stepped out of the timber to cross into the cutover,” Messina said. “I knew it was a good buck, but when I looked through my scope I said, ‘That cannot be possible.’”
He recognized the buck — a massive-racked deer that had been captured on a trail camera far from Messina’s current location. The deer’s rack was so impressive, club members dubbed it “Jaw Dropper.”
Messina quickly placed the crosshairs on the deer’s vitals and squeezed off a shot. The deer buckled, and ran into the thicket.
One of the other hunters soon called him, but Messina was tongue-tied.
“I was speaking in tongues,” he chuckled. “He asked, ‘Did you kill a big one?’ I said, ‘Bluh, bluh, bluh.’”
The decision was made to wait overnight to track the deer. The mercury was dropping into the 30s, so the meat wouldn’t spoil.
It was a long night, but the next morning Messina and a group of friends pushed through the thicket to the banks of a lake.
“One of the guys has a couple of black labs that they duck hunt with, but they’re also really good about picking up a (blood) trail,” Messina said. “They hit the lake and I thought, ‘Really good tracking dogs.’”
Soon, however, it was clear why the dogs ran into the water.
“You could see one foot sticking out, and they were pulling on him,” Messina said.
The hunter was told to go fetch his trophy, and Messina waded into the lake. He paused before pulling the deer’s head above water, though.
“They were all telling me, ‘Come on: Let’s see how small he is,’” Messina said. “I had been telling them how big it was.
“I sat there for a minute. I was like, ‘Please don’t pull a little deer out.’”
The buck’s rack was massive, with 12 points arrayed around thick main beams. One of the beams was palmated, padding the score.
The unofficial Boone & Crockett score was 163 1/8.
Messina was roundly congratulated by all but one member.
“He said, ‘Just think what it would have been like if you had had your bow,’” Messina laughed. “I told him that if I had had my bow I didn’t think I’d have been able to throw an arrow 116 yards.”
The gar-hole buck
Rad Trascher wasn’t even supposed to be at the camp just outside of Marksville on Nov. 15, but buddy Bryan Williams of Lake Charles called and talked Trascher into changing his plans.
“Bryan was supposed to have a client at the camp with him, and that guy backed out at the last minute,” Trascher said. “He called me and asked me to come hunt with him.”
The Baton Rouge hunter showed up at the camp about noon, and headed out with Williams for a tour of the 6,000-acre piece of property.
They eventually returned to a place where Williams knew a big buck lived
“When the deer was still in velvet, someone saw it,” Trascher said.
The only problem was that all of the members knew about the buck.
“A lot of the members were hunting in the area,” he explained.
So the pair moved about 500 yards from where the deer had been seen to a stand tucked only about 750 yards from the camp.
“The club president gave Bryan a hard time, telling him, ‘There’s nothing like bringing a visitor to the camp and putting him in the gar hole behind the camp,’” Trascher laughed.
Before he left for the stand, Trascher was warned to be careful of club rules stipulating that bucks must tape out 150 inches or age at least 5 years.
“They told me there’s going to be the prettiest 8-point you’ve ever seen, but don’t shoot it,” Trascher said.
After settling into stand that afternoon, Trascher soon had action on one of the food plots when a few does came out. The big 8-point, which the hunter admitted was huge, also passed the stand.
There was only one problem — the wind was howling and it was cold.
“The wind was blowing about 30 mph, so I had left the back window closed to try and keep that wind out of the stand,” Trascher said.
He didn’t think that’d be a big deal, since the food plots were in front of the box. Behind and upwind of Trascher was only a barren shooting lane.
As the sun began sinking behind the trees, however, Trascher glanced through the window and saw a deer about 175 yards away.
Trascher quickly stood, and when he peeked through the window, his jaw dropped.
“The big boy stepped out right behind (the first buck),” he said. “I thought, ‘Oh my God. That’s the biggest thing I’ve ever seen.”
The excited hunter quickly counted points, and then the Plexiglas window slammed down.
“He ran about 30 yards, and he decided to look back before he stepped in the woods,” Trascher said. “I don’t know why he stopped. I whistled, but he couldn’t hear me in that wind.”
Crosshairs quickly lined up on the deer, and Trascher squeezed the trigger of his 7 mm Magnum.
Even though his crosshairs were shaky, Trascher knew he hit the buck.
“He had his tail down, and he didn’t run like the other buck did,” he said.
Trascher sat down to wait.
“It took me 15 minutes to settle down,” he said. “It was a great hunt, until I couldn’t find him.”
That’s right — Trascher dismounted the stand after getting his heart rate under control and rushed to the spot where the buck disappeared into the woods, and found nothing.
“I knew I was shaking, so it might not have been the best shot,” he admitted. “But I knew it was hit.”
Trascher pushed into the woods, only to discover the challenge of trailing a deer in that area.
“There were the thickest palmettos I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Trying to find a deer in that stuff is tough.”
It wasn’t long before he had plenty of help.
“Since I’m next to the camp, every member in the camp decided to help look for it,” he chuckled. “There were 10 or 11 people searching for it.”
After 2½ hours, the crew was ready to call it quits. Everyone except Trascher.
“I asked if I could hunt that stand the next morning so I could look for it again, and they agreed,” Trascher said.
The following morning, Trascher and Williams began a more meticulous search.
“We did what you’re supposed to do, and searched in quadrants,” Trascher said.
The two men walked about 15 yards apart, and it didn’t take long.
“Bryan yelled out, ‘Did it look like this?’” Trascher said. “I looked over, and he was holding the deer’s head above the palmettos.”
The buck had run less than 100 yards before piling up at the base of a big palmetto.
“He was laying under that palmetto, but he never bled,” Trascher said. “I had hit him a little far back.”
Amazingly, that specific area had been thoroughly searched the evening before.
“There were footprints all around the deer, but nobody saw it,” Trascher said.
Trascher couldn’t believe how big the deer’s rack was. Twelve points arrayed around main beams that stretched 21 inches, and he could barely get his hands around the bases.
But it didn’t take long for him to start worrying.
“If you were to ask me (before finding it), that thing was a 200-point behemoth,” Trascher said. “But I looked at it and said, ‘Wait a minute: Is this going to score 150?’”
Williams baited Trascher, expressing doubt that it would score high enough to avoid a big fine. But the club member finally smiled and told him it was a good kill.
“It’s tough to screw up with a 12-point that weighed 200 pounds and had 7-inch (circumference) beams,” Trascher said.
The rack greenscored 163 B&C, and Trascher said camp members kidded him but that there was no jealousy.
“All of the members and the owner were so gracious,” he said. “I never felt uncomfortable.”
Of course, Trascher said he understood that it might be a while before he was allowed to hunt there again.
“I fully expect to get invited back during the work weekend in August,” he laughed.
Timing is everything
Prairieville’s Michael Boudin knew there was a big buck on a small tract of family property in Iberville Parish because he’d seen it.
“Two years ago, I was hunting a spot off a right of way where I had found some decent deer sign,” Boudin said. “He was on the right, and he was coming toward me, but at about 120 yards, he stopped and walked back (the way he came).”
The animal didn’t appear to be aware of Boudin’s presence, but as it slipped off, Boudin threw lead.
“I shot and missed,” he said.
The antlers of the buck were big and recognizable, distinguished by their pearly white color.
Boudin returned to the same spot at the end of the 2007-08 season, and put a lock-on up near a line of scrapes and hookings, but never saw the buck.
He wasn’t ready to give up, however. He returned this year on Nov. 16, this time with his 12-year-old son Trent who was hunting for the first time with his own rifle.
The two set up separately around the area in which Boudin had spotted the deer two years ago, and waited as the afternoon aged.
“I had scent wicks out, which I do every time I hunt,” he said.
Boudin also used a grunt call.
However, his patience quickly wore thin.
“I had some armadillos right under me,” Boudin said. “I hate them. You can’t hear anything because they make so much noise.”
However, just after grunting a few times, Boudin heard the sound of a stick break through the din created by the rooting armodillos.
“I looked behind me, and all I saw was a white rack,” he said. “He had his head up, smelling, but he didn’t seem alarmed. He was walking toward me.”
Adrenaline spiked through Boudin’s system, and he brought his rifle to bear as he battled the excitement.
“He turned to eat off a small bush, and I shot him in the neck,” he said. “I didn’t want to wait for a perfect broadside shot with him being so close.”
The deer hit the ground dead.
Broudin climbed off the stand and got his first really good look at the buck.
“I didn’t get to see his full body until I got down to check on him,” he said of the buck, which later weighed in at 265 pounds.
The rack was equally impressive, with 12 tall points, a 19½-inch inside spread, 27 1/2-inch main beams and a circumference of more than 6 inches between each of the G2s and G3s.
“I knew he was a real big deer, but I really didn’t get to see his spread (before shooting),” Boudin said. “I just saw wide and thick palmated horns.”
He wrestled the deer, which later weighed in at 265 pounds, onto his four-wheeler, and checked on his son via a two-way radio.
“He asked me, ‘Did you hear me shoot?’” Boudin said. “I told him I hadn’t, and he said, ‘I just shot my first buck.’”
Boudin hurried to Trent’s stand, and began searching. Unfortunately, the deer appeared to survive.
“He missed,” Boudin said.
However, the father-son team celebrated the killing of a trophy that greenscored at 160 3/8 B&C.
“It really surprised me,” Boudin said. “I was just in the right place. I must have been in his bedroom or something.”
Another West Carroll monster
Oak Grove’s Keith Neathery knew there was a big deer on the roughly 250-acre tract of land he and his father-in-law hunt in West Carroll Parish.
“We had pictures of him on my father-in-law’s camera, but they were all at night,” Neathery explained.
But when he climbed into a stand in the early-morning hours of Dec. 7, Neathery wasn’t even thinking about that buck.
“The stand we’d been seeing him at was maybe half a mile away,” he said.
About 7 a.m., a deer stepped into one of the shooting lanes about 100 yards out, and started walking directly toward the shocked hunter.
The buck was sporting the largest 8 points Neathery had ever seen, but it still didn’t register that it was the same buck that had been caught by the trail camera.
“I didn’t think he was nearly as big as he was,” the hunter explained. “That thing was so big (in the body) that the rack didn’t look as big.”
Neathery didn’t take too long pondering the situation: He quickly drew a bead on the animal, and squeezed off a shot with his .300 short magnum as the deer quartered at about 75 yards.
The deer fell in its track, but wasn’t dead.
“I had to shoot him twice,” Neathery said. “The first shot was a little high, and hit him in the top of the neck. He fell right there and wallowed around.”
The second shot dispatched the buck, and the hunter climbed out of his stand. He didn’t go to the deer, however. First Neathery went and got his father-in-law so he could share the moment.
“As soon as we got down to (the deer), I said, ‘That thing grew,’” Neathery said.
The buck tipped the scales at 270 pounds, and its rack was massive. Twenty-eight-inch main beams and an inside spread that ticked off 20½ inches were the foundation for the antlers. Thick bases and tall, sweeping G2s and G3s rounded out the rack.
Simmons Sporting Goods greenscored the deer at 158 6/8 inches B&C.
“I just couldn’t believe how big that thing was,” Neathery said.
Beauregard trophy
The 170 acres behind Kraig Welborn’s house outside of DeRidder has annually produced food for the table, but on Nov. 30 the hunter was after something a little bigger.
“I got a picture of him about a week before,” Welborn said of the big buck he was targeting. “I’ve got some sawtooth oaks planted, and there are rubs all over those things.”
That same week, Welborn spotted a big deer in a neighbor’s field one night.
“I thought that could be the same one,” he said. “I said, ‘I wish that sucker would screw up and come out in the daylight.’”
The only question on this day was which stand to hunt.
“I put up a ground blind Thanksgiving week, and it looked down a fence line,” he said. “I had only sat it once, and I had seen a couple of does.
“I decided to sit it again.”
That was a fortuitous decision.
Welborn had barely settled into the blind when he saw a deer step out of his thicket.
“I hadn’t been on stand but about 10 minutes,” he chuckled. “I about waited too long to go hunting.”
He knew instantly it was the deer he’d seen on photos, and he snapped his .300 Ultra Mag into place.
“I didn’t give him any time,” Welborn said.
A squeeze of the trigger, and the deer dropped in its tracks.
Welborn hurried to the deer, and found a buck that matched every expectation.
The antlers’ inside spread measured 17 3/8 inches, and the long main beams sprouted 10 symmetrical points. The G2s stretched about 10 inches.
Welborn said the antlers greenscored at about 150 B&C.
“In Beauregard Parish, that’s a trophy,” he said.
New-member luck
Roger Jeansonne was a first-year member in a 2,000-acre LaSalle Parish lease, but he’d heard the stories of a big buck.
“Some of the other members had seen a big deer on camera,” the 67-year-old Pineville hunter said.
The deer had been seen in different places on the lease, but Jeansonne hoped he’d at least get a glimpse of the deer.
On Nov. 14, he headed to a box stand overlooking two shooting lanes, but he took a bit of corn with him.
“I’d been noticing where a deer had been crossing (the foot trail) where I walked back and forth to my truck,” Jeansonne said. “That morning, I threw out some corn on that trail.”
He climbed into his stand, and prepared to sit as long as possible.
“I always stick with it until noon when I hunt,” he said.
That paid off at about 10:30 a.m. when he glanced down his foot trail and saw a buck about 100 yards away.
He quickly aimed and shot the deer, which promptly ran into the woods. Jeansonne knew it was a nice deer, but hadn’t really taken time to look it over.
The animal had run only about 30 yards before keeling over, and the hunter still didn’t take much time examining the antlers when he found it.
“I grabbed the horns and started dragging it back to the trail,” Jeansonne said, noting that the deer later tipped the scales to 270 pounds. “I dragged it two steps at a time. I’m 67 years old, so I didn’t want to overdo it. I would drag him two steps and rest a while.
“It took me an hour to drag it 30 yards.”
When the job of moving the deer back to the trail was completed, Jeansonne returned to his stand, climbed up and sat down to drink some water. That’s when he started noticing the rack’s size.
“I looked back down that lane and said, ‘My God, that is a big deer,’” he said.
He went and got his son and other camp members to help load the deer, and they were stunned.
“The others couldn’t believe how big it was,” Jeansonne said. “When we got it onto the four-wheeler, it just covered the back side of the four-wheeler.”
He received further confirmation of the impact of the kill driving home with the deer in the back of his truck.
“People were pulling up next to us on the road and sticking their arms out the window to take pictures,” Jeansonne said. “This was a big deer.”
That’s a bit of an understatement: The deer’s rack sported 14 scorable points, with several others that were too short to be scored, arrayed along main beams encircling 20 inches of air.
Simmons Sporting Goods tagged it with a greenscore of 169 7/8 B&C.
“It really caught me by surprise,” Jeansonne said.
