Heavy-horned 10-point green-scored 155 inches
Trail camera photos of a mature buck in Jackson Parish revealed that it was a really big deer, and the fact it only showed nighttime movement — never, ever during daylight hours — revealed the wily old buck’s nasty attitude.
So much so, in fact, that members of Two Creeks Hunting Club there nicknamed the buck “Big Nasty.”
On Dec.10, Big Nasty finally went down — but came within a crunchy peanut shell of making a quick getaway.
Schymaya “Shay” Seacrist, who works as a certified surgical technologist at St. Francis Hospital in Monroe, was preparing to leave her stand that morning and grew tired of the crunch of peanut shells on the floor her dad Georg had left behind.
She opened the door to the stand, propped her rifle in the corner, got on her knees and began brushing the shells out before climbing down to wait for her ride. In doing so, she happened to glance down the line and to her surprise, there stood Big Nasty over a pile of rice bran 155 yards away in the middle of the pipeline she had been watching.
“I had been dropped off at my stand early that morning by Steve Gates, a club member guest, who continued on to his assigned stand, 375 yards down the line,” she said. “My dad had been seeing deer from this stand for several days prior to that morning and had actually seen Big Nasty three times, shooting at, but missing the buck.”
As the morning wore on, she had only seen one deer and she texted her dad — who was on another stand in a different location — that she wanted to relocate. He convinced her that since it was so cold, the deer would be moving late. Finally relenting, she contacted Gates and they agreed he would pick her up at soon after 9.
As Gates packed his gear and began to descend the stand, he looked up and also saw the buck stepping into the pipeline. He waited for Seacrist to shoot, not knowing she was busy brushing peanut shells out of the stand.
“I happened to look up and couldn’t believe my eyes; there stood Big Nasty. I hurriedly got my Remington .308 in position, got the buck in the scope, touched the trigger and the buck hit the ground,” Seacrist said. “I couldn’t believe what had just happened and that Steve was on his ladder watching the whole thing unfold.”
The buck was a dandy. Sporting 10 long points, its 13 ½-inch inside spread diminished the characteristics of the rack only minimally. Main beams were more than 22 inches each, with G2s over 9 inches and G3s exceeding 10 inches. Bases were 5 inches in circumference, and the buck weighed 225 pounds.
She took the buck to Simmons’ Sporting Goods in Bastrop to enter it in the store’s Big Buck Contest, where it scored 155 3/8 — good enough for 3rd place right now in the women’s division.
“That’s pretty special,” said her dad. “Shooting him at 155 yards — and he scored 155 inches.”
