Tristan Mizer has always been a bow hunter, and had never hunted with a rifle. But this summer he bought a .308, and he broke in the new firearm in style with a 160-inch brute on Halloween morning.
“I just wanted to try (rifle hunting) out and see if I could kill something,” the Leesville hunter said. “Low and behold this deer walked out.”
Mizer knew the buck was on the Natchitoches Parish lease, having captured several trail-cam photos of the deer over the past 18 months.
“Last year, in March, I got had gotten him on a trail cam, and then I never did see him again,” said Mizer, who goes by the screen name “Buckeye 10.” “Then in the first part of September I got him again on camera. I got six pictures of him.”
Click here to see trail-cam photos of the big buck.
So he created a food plot in the woods near the trail-cam location, and set up a double ladder stand.
He hunted the stand often when bow season opened, and Oct. 31 found him and buddy Sean Sturm easing through the woods to sit the stand.
“My buddy hadn’t been seeing any deer, so he came and sat with me,” Mizer said. “I was going to let him shoot something.”
But the early morning didn’t start very well.
“We left the truck at 5:30, but it took me an hour and 15 minutes to get to the stand,” Mizer said. “Every couple of steps I would take another deer would jump.
“We probably jumped a dozen deer.”
So it was 6:45 before the two hunters finally settled into the stand. Mizer wasn’t very optimistic.
“I didn’t figure I would see anything,” he said. “Every single one of those deer blew at me.”
And for the first hour, nothing happened. Just before 8 a.m., Mizer decided to stand to stretch his legs. Sturm remained seated.
“I just happened to look to my left, and I had hunted the stand so often I saw something that looked out of place,” Mizer said. “What it was was the deer’s front legs.”
He quietly told Sturm about the deer that was only about 50 yards away, and told his buddy to get ready to shoot.
However, as Sturm eased the rifle up, the deer took another step and Mizer’s heart palpitated.
“When he took that step, I could see one tine,” Mizer said. “When I saw that one time, I knew it was him.”
The tine in question was unique to the deer, stretching sky high.
“His G2s on both sides were so long, so when I saw that tine, I knew it was him,” he said.
Mizer eased down and took the rifle from Sturm, and carefully laid it across the shooting rail.
“When he stepped out in that opening, I didn’t want him to go any farther so I shot him,” Mizer said. “He fell in his tracks.”
The hunters hurried to the deer, and Mizer’s mouth dropped.
“He’s actually bigger than I thought he was,” the hunter said. “He didn’t look like he had that much mass in the trail cam pictures, and I couldn’t tell how big his body was in the pictures.”
The buck’s rack held 10 points, most of which were long and thick. The G2s eventually taped out 13 2/8 inches each, with brow tines measuring just short of 9 inches.
The body size stunned Mizer, as well.
“He weight 238 pounds,” he said. “I just couldn’t believe how big that deer was, both in body and in antlers.”
Simmons Sporting Goods scored the deer at 160 2/8 as part of its Big Buck Contest.
“I’m just tickled,” Mizer said. “Sometimes I still don’t know what to think.”
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