Frozen lock ends up putting hunter in position for trophy
North Louisiana saw something rare on Nov. 14, when snow fell over much of the region. That night, the temperature dropped into the mid-20s and the next morning, Wade Holloway found himself in a quandary: The 41-year-old Homer banker couldn’t get the lock to work on the gate leading to the stand he planned to hunt on 280 acres of land in Claiborne Parish.
“When I left home, the thermometer read 24 degrees and as I tried the key in the lock, it was frozen up and I couldn’t open the gate,” he said. “As a result, I headed to another stand down the road a little way.”
That stand sat overlooked a food plot where a wildlife mix was planted with turnips, clover and wheat, and recent rains had the food plot in good condition. On one side of the stand was a pine plantation, and on the other a stand of mature hardwoods.
Climbing into his box stand while it was still dark, Holloway settled in for a cold morning. For the past three years, a particular buck had shown up on his cameras — one that showed promise of being a shooter.
But there was only one nighttime photo of the buck this year, so he was not particularly encouraged. And by 9, he had not seen a single deer and had enough of the morning chill so he decided to leave the stand. But before departing, he decided to check a game camera set up 150 yards from the stand — and then things started getting interesting.
“I walked down toward my camera when I jumped a doe I didn’t know was there and she took off,” Holloway said. “I walked over to where she had run and was standing there when I heard another deer running directly toward me.
“I looked up to see this big buck, nose to the ground following the trail the doe had left — and he was headed right at me.”
When he realized he was looking at a big buck with its head down concentrating on the trail of the doe, he quickly raised his Browning X-bolt .300 Win-mag, found brown on the shoulder in his scope and hit the trigger. At just 12 steps, the bullet found its mark and the buck hit the ground.
“Man, that was an exciting moment right there,” he said. “I mean, he was about to run over me but when he hit the ground as I shot, I knew it was the one we’d seen on trail cameras.”
The buck carried 12 points on a massive rack: The inside spread was 20 ½ inches, with main beams over 22 inches each. Bases were right at 5 inches, and the deer weighed 176 pounds. The rack measured just shy of 150 inches, and the buck was determined to be at least 5 ½ years old.
Three days prior to this hunt, Holloway shot another good buck on the property — a 10-point that would likely have matched this one in score except for having its G3 broken off.