Although 40-year-old Scott Thrasher had the day off Nov. 30, with his eye on sitting on his stand as dawn broke over the Bienville Parish woods, the weatherman put a kink in his hunting plans.
“Instead of heading for my stand, I drove on down to the store located near our hunting lease and sat and chatted with the fellows there because the weather forecast called for an 80 percent chance of rain,” Thrasher explained.
The weatherman also told of an approaching cold front that gave Thrasher second thoughts.
“Even though it was on up in the morning, I decided to go on out and sit awhile because of the front moving in; I thought maybe the deer would be moving,” he said. “Since September, I had been getting the images of a really big buck with a strange rack, so I was hoping the weather change would have him on the move.”
Thrasher is a member of the 2,000-acre CC Hunting Club, with a southern boundary almost reaching the Saline town limits. Some 1,600 acres of the property, leased from Martin Timber Company, lies between the town of Saline and Saline Bayou; another 400 acres of the lease is across the bayou. To reach this latter plot, it is necessary to drive east from Saline several miles and loop back in to the smaller tract.
“My stand I wanted to hunt is located on the 400 acres, so I drove around to that side and crawled up on my two-man ladder stand,” Thrasher said. “The wind had started picking up pretty good by the time I got on the stand.”
It didn’t take long for his effort to be rewarded, however.
“I hadn’t sat on the stand but a few minutes when I heard a noise that sounded like a buck grunting,” Thrasher said. “After awhile, I heard it again and knew it was a deer.
“In fact, I was hearing distinctly different grunts from two bucks. One had a deep tone to it; the other traveling about 100 yards behind didn’t sound as low pitched.”
It was an anxiety-filled wait.
“The grunts would sound like the deer were moving my way, but then they would fade like they were going the other way,” he said. “About that time, a doe stepped across my shooting lane, and I was really hoping the bucks were following her.”
And it sounded like his hopes were answered.
“The last grunt I heard was closer, so I got my rifle up and waited,” Thrasher said. “Five minutes after she crossed, the big buck came onto the lane with his head down.
“I shoot a Remington Model 700, 308 caliber, and I put the crosshairs on his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. He ran about 20 yards and toppled over.”
Thrasher decided to sit awhile on his stand because he was curious as to what size the other buck was. But, after 10 minutes or so with no evidence of the second buck, he climbed down and walked to his prize.
He couldn’t handle the massive animal by himself.
“This buck was so big there was no way I could load it by myself, so I called several friends, none of which were available,” Thrasher said. “I drove back into town, met an oil-field worker who was checking wells who agreed to help me load the deer.”
The buck was indeed a behemoth, tipping the scales at 250 pounds, a monster for Bienville Parish.
And the rack matched the body size. The peculiar antler configuration yielded 12 points with a 17-inch inside spread and included an extra beam protruding from its head just behind the buck’s right eye.
As of this writing, the buck has not been scored and is at Frank Gates’ Taxidermy shop near Creston.