Lizzie Barron, a 19-year-old nursing student from Spearsville, has windy conditions to thank for choosing to hunt a different, more secure stand on Halloween morning. Sitting with her grandfather in his sturdy stand, she put the crosshairs on a big 12-point buck.
Barron hunts with her grandparents, a cousin and friend on a hunting lease in Union Parish near Spearsville.
“I woke up that morning and was trying to decide whether or not to get up, get dressed and head for my stand. In fact, my ‘papaw’, who is my hunting partner, thought maybe it was too windy and a hunt this morning wouldn’t be worth the effort,” Barron said.
The image of a big buck she had on camera near her stand was in her mind and she told her grandfather she wanted to go get on her tall 4×4 foot high stand.
“My papaw said if I insisted on going, he and I would go sit in his stand which was larger and sturdier than my stand. We rode his Ranger to his stand and got there later than we wanted to; it was already around 7:00,” she said.
Change of plans
Barron, a nursing student at South Arkansas Community College in El Dorado, Ark., couldn’t forget the image of the big buck she had seen on her camera near her stand.
“The Saturday before, I was in Shreveport and my papaw sent me a photo from my camera of the big buck. I was really concentrating on getting a chance at him from my stand but with the wind so strong, he thought it best to hunt his stand instead,” she said.
Barron had taken a small 7-point buck from her stand on Monday, Oct. 28, and had let a nice 10-point buck get by without getting a shot so she knew there was the possibility of good action around her stand. However, she agreed, perhaps reluctantly, to follow her grandfather’s advice to hunt on his larger, more secure stand.
“Within half an hour after getting on my papaw’s stand with him, four does came out to the pipeline we were watching and they appeared to be nervous. I felt like something was about to happen and got ready just in case. Sure enough,” Barron said, “a big buck stepped out at 125 yards.”
Barron gets her shot
Settling the crosshairs on her Howa bolt action .243 on the buck’s vitals, she squeezed off a shot. The buck ran but kicked up as if it had been hit.
“We waited awhile before getting down and climbed in the Ranger to go look for my deer. We got to the spot where he was standing and didn’t find any blood or sign I had hit the deer. As my papaw began searching along the edge of the brush next to the clearing and not finding any sign, he decided to call someone with a blood trailing dog to help us locate the deer. I looked down and saw that he had parked the Ranger on top of a good spot of blood. We were able to follow the trail and within five minutes, we found the buck lying where it fell; it was the big buck I had on camera near my stand,” said Barron.
The buck sported 12 points on a heavy set of antlers, had an inside spread of 17 ½ inches with long main beams. The buck weighed in at 190 pounds and was estimated to be about 5 ½ years old. The rack stretched the tape to 166 1/8 inches of bone on the Buckmaster’s scale.