Preston Gardner of Monroe had a change of plans after his classes at Ole Miss were cancelled, so he went to his deer camp, Lookout Point Hunting Club in East Carroll Parish, in search of a big buck he had seen on a game camera. Surprisingly, he ended up shooting another deer on Oct. 29, a massive 8-point main frame buck with a kicker off his G2. The buck, nicknamed “Horseshoe” due to an antler configuration, scored 148 1/2 inches and weighed in at an impressive 234 pounds.
“I saw the buck last year but never got any photos,” Gardner said. “I got my first picture of him back on Sept. 20 when he just walked in front of the camera, but I didn’t think too much of him when I first saw him on camera. But I was checking some rub lines the first weekend in October and checking a bedding area, and I jumped him up and saw he was a mature deer. I had another deer that I knew that was in the area, a bigger 10-point that I was hunting, but if this deer came out, then I knew I was going to kill him.”
The first afternoon that Gardner hunted he got “blown out” due to high winds. He skipped hunting the next morning as well due to the high winds.
White oak cover scent
Before the afternoon hunt, Gardner sprayed himself down with some white oak scent spray.
“I decided to hunt the deer from the ground,” he said. “I had a good wind, so I just sat down and kept spraying the white oak scent in the air just trying to keep my scent out of the woods. Every time I hunted around the food plot, I sprayed that white oak scent so that they would get used to the smell.
“Around 4:30, two bucks came into the food plot. About 10 minutes later, I had a doe get down wind of me and blow. It spooked the deer, so I thought it was going to be another bad hunt.
“About an hour after that, everything changed, and it just turned on instantly. I had a bunch of deer come in, including almost every deer that I had seen on camera with him, except Horseshoe. They were really piling in the food plot.”
Plenty of activity
Gardner said he had two does feeding nearby and they got within five steps of him. They just stared at him, and he couldn’t move a muscle for fear of spooking the other deer again.
“I looked to my right, and I saw one smaller buck come in, and right behind him, Horseshoe popped out,” Gardner said. “Then one of the does smelled the bottom of my boot, and she took off. I mean, I could have reached out and petted her, but the other deer in the patch never even moved. I ranged the buck at 49 yards, drew back and shot him quartering towards me.”
“Thwack!” The Easton arrow from Gardner’s Mathews Lift X 33 bow went through the kill zone and the buck ran off.
“It was 6:28 when I shot, almost too dark,” Gardner said. “I didn’t know what the shot placement was, but I had a full pass through when I found the arrow. I backed out for a couple of hours, came back with a friend, brought my Red Fox Lab out and found the buck only 30 yards outside the patch.”
