Jeremy Horner has killed a lot of deer in his 35 years, and he’s usually chasing the animals hard. But this season he just hasn’t had time.
“I really haven’t been into hunting this year,” the Erwinville hunte told LouisianaSportsman.com. “I’m usually on them in July and August with cameras and doing a lot of scouting, but I just didn’t have time this year because of work.”
Horner accepted the realities of life, and had adopted a new philosophy.
“I said, ‘I’m not going to chase them. I’m not going to feed them,’” he said. “‘I’m just going hunting.’”
So he had made less than 10 hunts when he climbed into his West Baton Rouge Parish tree stand Wednesday afternoon (Dec. 16), and he was running late for this hunt.
“I left my house about 10 minutes after 4 (p.m.), and I was on my stand by 4:30,” Horner said.
There was only one problem – his seat was wet from the torrential rains, and Horner was soon soaked.
“After about 45 minutes, I said, ‘I ain’t sitting here. Piss on it,’” he said. “I just didn’t feel right sitting there.”
So Horner climbed out of the stand and began walking back to his truck, his rifle slung on his shoulder and his cell phone in his hand.
“I was texting,” he admitted. “I was reading something and was fixing to type something back when I was 30 or 40 yards from the truck.”
As he contemplated what to text, Horner glanced up at his truck – and stopped dead in his tracks.
“The deer was standing behind the truck about 40 yards off to the left looking at me,” Horner said. “I’ve got my phone in one hand holding it up, and my rifle is on my shoulder.
“What do you do?”
Horner made took a quick peek at the deer’s rack, and saw drop tines and lots of mass. But he quickly looked away from the deer’s head.
“I never make eye contact with a deer,” he explained. “I think that spooks them.”
He knew it was a big-antlered deer, and one he had never seen on camera, but he didn’t absorb much detail about the size of the rack.
After a few seconds, which seemed an eternity to Horner, he decided the deer wasn’t going to stand there forever.
“I let my phone go and it hit the ground, and I reached for my rifle,” he said.
The buck reacted instantly, but with less urgency than Horner expected.
“He took off, but he was kind of loping,” Horner said.
The frantic hunter moved to get in a better position to fire as he brought the rifle to bear, and then the unexpected happened.
“I took about five or six steps forward, and he stopped,” Horner said. “He stopped to look at me one last time, I guess.
“He should have never stopped.”
Horner quickly lined up the crosshairs and squeezed the trigger. The deer bolted.
“I knew I had hit him by the way he was running,” Horner said.
The deer quickly crossed the few yards remaining to the treeline and disappeared.
“I heard a crash,” Horner said. “I heard a sharp crack like a tree breaking.”
The man was shaking and didn’t want to push the buck, but he had to confirm the hit. So he put his rifle on the hood of his truck and eased over to where the deer was standing.
“There blood everywhere,” Horner said.
He followed the trail a few more yards, and then backed off as the darkness approached.
However, he could only stand a few-minute delay. Soon he had his rifle and a flashlight, and followed the blood trail to the woods.
“There was plenty of blood,” Horner said. “I went five steps in the woods, and he was laying right there.
“He was dead as a hammer, facing me.”
The flashlight glinted off a massive rack, with points seemingly protruding everywhere.
“I could see that drop tine sticking up,” Horner said. “I just kind of freaked out. I’ll tell the truth, I hollered.”
The 240-pound buck wore a truly impressive crown of antlers, with 17 points and thick mass.
“It had 7 ¼-inch bases,” Horner said.
As he knelt down to put his hands on the antlers, Horner said he was flooded with thoughts.
“Your whole life of hunting sort of flashing through your mind,” he said. “You have so many thought go through your head. You think of your loved ones – I have some uncles who have passed on – who would be proud of you. I thought of my dad.”
The deer later taped out at an incredible 197-inches Boone & Crockett – but Horner said it could have hit the 200-inch mark.
“I didn’t notice at the time that another drop tine was broke off,” he said. “He hit a damned tree when he ran into the woods, and it looked like he hit another one.
“I went back the next day and the (broken) tine was lying right there.”
Horner said he wasn’t surprised that there was a buck like that in this roughly 600-acre tract of land.
“I knew there were some big deer in there,” he said. “I’ve seen some big deer driving out, but I never thought I’d kill one.”
