Red River WMA lottery youth hunt yields 130-class deer

Pineville 6th-grader kills 130-class buck during Red River WMA youth Hunt

Pineville 6th-grader Chloe Slayter has not been in school long enough to learn about the power of three, but she knows about the three bears.

She knows about the three little pigs.

She even knows about the Three Stooges.

But she hasn’t yet learned in class that things that come in threes are inherently more satisfying and more effective than any other number of things.

Some lessons are better learned in the real world.

She learned first hand about the power of three on Saturday (Jan. 12) during her third successful Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries youth lottery hunt that ended in a 130-class deer on the ground.

“Those are my lucky hunts,” she giggled. “And three must be my lucky number.”

Lucky hunts indeed. The 11-year old J.I. Barron Elementary student has been drawn for three LDWF youth hunts, and she has killed deer on all three of those hunts.

As for three being her lucky number, Slayter shot an eye-opening buck on her most recent youth hunt.

“Nobody else in my family has killed a deer over 8 points, and no other girl in my family hunts except for me,” she pointed out much to the chagrin of her older brother Chase, who playfully told her on Friday night not to kill anything over 7 points.

Slayter and her dad Jay left Pineville at 3 a.m. Saturday for the nearly two-hour drive to Red River Wildlife Management Area. Of the five youths present for the hunt, Slayter drew stand No. 1.

Getting up before 3 a.m. took it’s toll as soon as father and daughter climbed into the stand; Chloe took a 45-minute nap.

“She finally woke up and started playing her video game,” Jay Slayter recalled. “But I had to tell her to put it up real quick because I spotted a deer about 8:15.”

The deer never fully materialized, though, so the young hunter got her DS game system back out to restart her interrupted game. Moments later, she put it away for good.

“Five or ten minutes later, in the same area I saw the deer before, I see this deer walking toward us,” Jay Slayter continued. “I had planned for her to get in my lap like she has always done before, but I realized she was going to have to do everything on her own based on where it came out.”

Chloe Slayter knew the deer was big, but her dad kept trying to calm her down by telling her it was little.

And then came the moment of truth, when she knew she was on her own.

When she eyed the buck, she also knew she was going to defy her brother’s wishes.

Trying not to look at the deer’s horns, Chloe slid her 7mm-08 out the window and lined up her crosshairs on the shoulder.

“Dad kept asking me if I was on the shoulder,” she declared. “Finally the deer turned, and he asked me if I was ready to shoot it.”

What happened next was a cloudy combination of pure adrenaline and the power of recoil.

“I didn’t feel anything, but my arms flew back, and I flew back in my chair,” Chloe Slayter said. “I didn’t drop my rifle, though.”

The shot was true, and the lucky young hunter started “freaking out” when she saw that she had just shot a 170-pound buck that held 14 scorable points, along with a couple of other protrusions that brought the count up to 16 points.

A couple of days later, Jay Slayter’s taxidermist green scored the buck’s 14 scorable points at 134 2/8 inches Boone & Crockett.

“The guys with LDWF couldn’t believe it,” Jay Slayter said. “They aged it at 2 1/2 years old and thought it was run down a little bit. But one of the first things they told us to do was call Louisiana Sportsman.”

Jay Slayter has always submitted his children for the LDWF youth lottery hunts and makes the drive to whichever WMA for which they are lucky enough to be drawn.

And, as his daughter has demonstrated, being drawn for a hunt doesn’t guarantee success, but it sure does increase the odds of putting your child on some deer.

Click here to read about other big bucks.

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