Wood’s big buck green-scores 148 inches B&C
Bad weather ended Preston Wood’s plans to bowhunt last Friday in Webster Parish, so he decided to grab his rifle and head to a spot on a pipeline near Heflin that afternoon to see if he could put some more meat in the freezer.
He not only accomplished his mission, but on a cold, foggy afternoon ended up taking down the biggest buck of his life when a 10-pointer stepped out of a thicket at about 130 yards.
“Whenever I first saw him, I knew he was a big-bodied deer,” said Wood, 26, who works for Red Dog Oil Tools out of Minden. “Then I put the scope up and I saw his right side, and I knew he was definitely a shooter.”
Wood had arrived at the box stand around 3:30 that afternoon, but didn’t see a thing until the big buck stepped out around 5:15.
“There was no activity,” he said. “It was real foggy with kind of a misting rain, and I looked out to my left and he was standing on the edge.
“He started to walk and I had to shoot him as he was walking because my pipeline’s not very wide.”
Wood let the buck walk into the crosshairs of his .25-06 Ruger, then fired.
“After I pulled the trigger, he kicked and hit the ground, but got up,” Wood said. “As he was running off I got a pretty good look at his horns with my eyes, and that’s when I started shaking.”
Wood waited a while before getting out of the stand, then eased down to where he shot the buck. He didn’t find any blood, but headed into the woods where he had seen the deer enter.
“I walked in still looking for blood and I looked up and happened to see him laying there,” he said. “I hollered. I knew it was a big deer, but I didn’t realize how big he was until I got to him.”
The 10-pointer green-scored 148 inches Boone & Crockett, with more than 21 inches of air between his antlers and 5 1/8-inch bases. The 5 1/2-year-old deer tipped the scales at a healthy 218 pounds.
“That day, I wanted another deer for the freezer and there had been a lot of does eating there, so that was my intention that evening,” Wood said. “I just wanted to shoot a deer to put more meat up, but he just happened to walk out.
“I have two other deer on the wall, but they’re 130-class, so he smoked them all.”
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.
