Yet another Avoyelles Parish monster in the conversation for a new potential state record typical buck
Scotty Smith rang in 2019 with friends at a New Year’s Eve party until around 2 a.m., but still made it to his deer stand in Avoyelles Parish around 4:25 on the afternoon of Jan. 1.
You might say that’s when the real fireworks started for him this year.
The 36-year-old hunter was in his tripod overlooking the edge of an oxbow on the old Red River when a giant buck he’d been watching for years finally gave him the opportunity for a shot.
Smith took it from only 50 yards with his 6.5 Creedmoor — and now yet another Avoyelles Parish hammer is in talks about potentially breaking the state’s typical big buck record. (Joe McPherson’s 200-inch-class 17-pointer was shot only about 3 miles away on Dec. 9, and also is in typical state record talks.)
“I can’t lie to you,” Smith said about his big buck, with a chuckle. “I got so excited over that deer my eyes went blurry on me when I went to shoot him.”
But he’s definitely no stranger to monster deer.
He routinely lets 160-inch deer walk on the 6 acres he hunts, and shot a 180-class buck when he was just 17. And his wife, Amanda, knocked down the 25-point ‘Rougarou buck’ on the exact same property last January 13, which wound up at No. 5 in the state’s non-typical record books with a final score of 226 2/8 inches of bone.
He said it’s obvious his buck and the Rougarou come from the same blood line. His New Year’s Day 14-point typical, which pushed 300 pounds, green-scored 190 ⅜ at Simmons’ Sporting Goods in Bastrop, with split brow tines, a 20 ½-inch inside spread and 8-inch-plus bases.
“He didn’t have all the inside stuff the Rougarou did, but you tell it’s the same genes,” Smith said. “He just wasn’t as old. Amanda’s big deer ended up being 10 ½ with the biologists.”
Smith said the wily old buck had actually patterned him — until he turned the tables on it on New Year’s Day.
“I had been hunting a box stand for him, and I’d get off my stand and 10 minutes later he was eating. He was coming around me to get to the food plot, so I cut him off,” he said. “I had that tripod out for two years and hadn’t hunted it, and Amanda told me, “You ought to go get on that tripod.’ Thirty minutes after I was out there, I killed him.”
Shortly before 5 p.m., Smith saw the buck in the distance crossing the oxbow.
“I watched him come across the end of the oxbow for about 300 yards through some chest-deep water,” he said. “He came up on the bank. I watch him shake off the water and everything.”
When Smith shot, the big buck went down on its front legs and managed to make it only 20 yards before piling up.
Walking up on the monster was special after watching it all those years.
“I was excited,” he said. “I guessed him at about 200 inches all year with the pictures, and I hit it pretty close.”
Eventually the big buck will wind up on Smith’s living room wall with the Rougarou and a host of other big deer. After the mandatory 60-day drying period, Smith plans on taking the buck to the Louisiana Sportsman Show and Festival’s Big Buck Contest at the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center in Gonzales March 14-17 to get its official score.
Until then, we’ll all have to wait and wonder if this is the year Don Broadway’s 1943 record buck that scored 184 6/8 finally gets beaten.
Coincidentally, he and his wife saw this buck the same day she downed the Rougarou last January, he said.
“We were loading her deer on the 4-wheeler, and he was standing in the food plot waiting on us to get out the way,” Smith said. “He was about a 160- or 170-inch deer last year.”
