Lafourche Parish hunter shoots big 14-pointer in Tensas Parish

Guilbeau’s brute green scores 180 inches Boone and Crockett

Cooter Point might be just a small dot along Hwy. 573, but it’s definitely on the map as a big home to some super bucks in western Tensas Parish.

On the morning of Dec. 28, Chad Guilbeau took down a giant 14-point that weighed 235 pounds and green scored 180 inches Boone and Crockett on his 400-acre spread near Justina.

“I’ve hunted my whole life, from Canada to south Louisiana and lots of places in between, and to kill this caliber of deer on a piece of land that I own is like a dream come true,” said Guilbeau, 41, of Galliano. “My dad said, ‘Cooter Point strikes again!’”

Guilbeau’s monster came on the heels of John Parker’s 8-point ‘Elk Buck,’ which also was shot near Cooter Point in November and featured a jaw-dropping inside spread of 28 5/8 inches.

“Those bucks were taken basically out of the same area,” Guilbeau said. “Both of those deer were killed in probably a 3- or 4-mile radius.”

Guilbeau was originally going out with his 9-year-old son that Saturday morning to try to shoot a doe, but the young man had trouble getting out of bed. So Guilbeau, who bow hunts most of the time, grabbed his Thompson Center .35 Whelen and headed for his box alone.

“I knew it was going to be raining, so I just said, ‘Hell, I’ll take my Whalen and go sit in the box, and that’s what happened,” he said. “We did have one trail cam picture of the deer, but it only showed half his rack and it wasn’t a very good picture.

“We could tell it was a good-sized deer, we just had no idea he was that big.”

Incredibly, the big buck appeared about 8:15 and walked out of thick woods to the right of Guilbeau’s shooting lane and made his way about 170 yards from his stand.

“If he would have gone straight across the lane, I would have never gotten a shot on him. He was way too far and it would have been too fast, but when I saw him, I grabbed the gun and he started walking towards me, so I just waited and waited,” he said. “What startled him was the box. It looked like he was staring right at me.

“He took one hard step to the right and turned perfectly broadside and looked back again at me really, really alert like he was startled, and that was when I shot. He knew not to go next to that box, but he was a little too close.”

When Guilbeau fired the Whelen, the big buck wheeled around and headed for the woods, but never picked up his tail.

“I ran over there so fast, which was probably not the right thing to do,” he said with a chuckle. “I probably should have waited, but I was like a kid in a candy store.

“I didn’t know what to do with myself. I’ve seen a lot of big deer, but I knew he was special.”

Guilbeau, who works in the oilfield industry in Lafourche Parish, found blood where the big buck had shoved off, then found him piled up less than 50 yards from where he was hit with a perfect lung shot.

“I aimed right behind his shoulder for the lungs, like I would with my bow,” he said. “I aimed about 4- to 5-inches high, and that’s about how far the bullet dropped.”

The buck, a main frame 11-point, had three scorable kickers and 25-inch main beams. The inside spread was 22 ¼ inches, with 6-inch circumferences at the bases and almost 50 inches of mass.

Don’t forget to enter photos of your bucks in the Nikon Big Buck Photo Contest to be eligible for monthly giveaways and the random drawing for Nikon Monarch binoculars at the end of the contest.

Read other stories about big bucks killed this season by clicking here.

About Patrick Bonin 1315 Articles
Patrick Bonin is the former editor of Louisiana Sportsman magazine and LouisianaSportsman.com.