Hermaphrodite sported 20-inch-wide rack.
Jamie Brown pulled on her hot-pink bibs, drove up to her deer stand in her hot-pink jeep and promptly bagged a deer. With all these “girly” things going on, it was only natural that the deer she bagged was a doe.
However, it was no ordinary doe; the weird deer sported a velvet covered 5-point rack with a 20-inch inside spread and unbelievable 9 ¼-inch bases.
The 28-year-old Brown works for First Franklin Financial in Ruston, and is in only her second year of deer hunting. She shot a doe last season, and was determined never to shoot another doe after she heard her young nephew (who refers to her as “Aunt Mamie”) and who was hunting with her at the time call his mom to report, “Aunt Mamie just killed a mommy deer.”
“I really felt awful after hearing what my nephew said, and I decided if a deer didn’t have antlers, I wasn’t going to shoot it,” explained Brown, who goes by “harlene” on the LouisianaSportsman.com forum.
Brown, a former basketball player for the University of Louisiana Monroe, lives in Quitman with her mom and dad, and father Gary was at work at the paper mill in Hodge on Christmas Day. Gary as opposed to hunting on Sunday.
However, Jamie Brown and her mom wanted to go sit on their deer stands that afternoon.
“We weren’t having church Sunday night, so Mom and I persuaded Dad to let us go to the lease and enjoy the afternoon on our stands,” Brown said.
After Gary Brown reluctantly agreed to the afternoon hunt, mom and daughter headed out to their End of the Road hunting club in Jackson Parish.
“I dropped Mom off around 2:30 and drove around, parked my Jeep and walked through the woods to my box stand,” Jamie Brown said. “There was a feeder on the lane down from the stand, so I settled in, propped my rifle on the gun rest in the stand and began fooling with my phone, checking messages and texting.”
As the afternoon wore on, Brown looked up to see four deer at the feeder; all were “mommy deer,” so they were safe. Later, two more does came to feed, and she texted her mom to report what she had seen.
“I had just texted my mom when I looked down the lane about 150 yards and saw another deer step out,” she said. “I saw horns, and my heart started racing. I had never seen a buck in the woods in my life, and I began to realize that I was looking at a deer with antlers.”
The adrenaline rush wreaked havoc on the hunter.
“I’d never ever shot a gun by myself with no one around to coach me, and I was quickly becoming a nervous wreck,” Brown recalled. “I wanted to be sure the antlers were big enough because I didn’t want my dad to get after me for shooting a little buck.”
By that time, the deer had crossed the lane and had its head in the woods, about to be gone. Then fate stepped in.
“I reached for my gun, and the gun rest squeaked loudly,” Brown said. “The deer stopped and looked at me, and I could see it had a big rack.
“So I shouldered the .308, put the crosshairs on the shoulder and touched the trigger. When I shot, it scared me, and I shut my eyes and put the gun down.”
She called her mom to tell her she’d just shot a deer with a big set of antlers. She called her mother, who climbed out of her stand and headed to check things out.
“I called my dad, who had gotten home from work,” Brown said. “He asked me what the deer did when I shot. I told him I didn’t know; my eyes were shut.
“He was reluctant to come, assuming at that distance (that) I’d probably missed.”
To ensure she would be able to keep the mental image of where the deer was standing when she fired, Brown got down from her stand and walked to the spot.
She found nothing.
“I just sat down next to a big tree to wait for Mom and Dad,” Brown said. “I was really down, and was about to cry when I heard coyotes howling nearby. I called mom to tell her, and she suggested that I jack a round in the chamber in case they got too close.”
There was a problem; Brown had never loaded the gun by herself, and she was clueless as to how to do it. Fortunately, Mom and Dad soon arrived, and the search began.
“Dad was looking where I thought the deer was standing, found some hair and just a few feet into the woods there was lots of blood,” Brown said. “We followed the blood trail about 100 yards and found the deer.”
Examination of the deer proved to be what Brown’s dad had suspected. Trail camera photos had revealed a deer with a thin neck, nothing like the thick neck of a buck in rut. The strange-looking deer was indeed a doe.
See other photos of the deer, including the trail-cam image, in the forum.
The rough score, estimated by a taxidermist, was between 120 and 130.
From Jamie Brown’s broad grin, it’s obvious this was one “mommy deer” she was proud to claim.