If you look it up, you’ll find that a “behemoth” is defined as a “huge or monstrous creature.” It’s the nickname 30-year-old attorney Micah Arbuckle, who lives and hunts near Belmont, gave a big buck he found on his cameras, and it seems fitting. He named this buck the “Belmont Behemoth.”
Arbuckle hunts on a 400 acre tract behind his house in Sabine Parish, much of which is owned by his in-laws, where they have several broiler houses where they raise chickens for the market. The acreage also features pastureland and a pipeline running through the property.
“I had a buck on my camera two years ago that I thought was the one I ultimately got,” Arbuckle said. “It had some of the same features but another hunter shot it, so I assumed my quest for the big one was over. However, this similar one showed up on my cameras this past October, so I knew it was a different buck from the one I first saw in 2022.
“The buck was only showing up on my cameras at night so I made a mock scrape and set a camera near one of my deer stands. I was elated when on Nov. 14 he was on the camera in late afternoon, around 5:40.”
Picking the right moment
Feeling he had maybe a two or three day window when the buck was most likely to appear during daylight, Arbuckle decided to clear his calendar so he could be on his stand the days following the daylight photo.
“I couldn’t sleep the night before because of my excitement and had all my gear laid out for a hunt on Nov. 15,” he said. “I crawled into my box stand at 4:30 that morning, put my gun on the window and had a good favorable wind. I was ready in case the buck decided to come out. I had already decided to not pick up my phone because I didn’t want anything to distract me.”
Arbuckle did, however, have to pick up his phone because it was pinging to let him know that there was a deer around one of his other cameras at a different stand. However, it was not the big one.
“About 6 a.m., a small buck showed up on my camera in front of my stand but it was too early to see it well,” he said. “I could see it was a buck but not the one I was after.”
The behemoth shows up
As it started to get daylight, Arbuckle watched a doe come out to feed on the corn he had near the mock scrape. In just a moment, he saw another bigger deer that was about to step out in the clearing he was watching.
“There is a big pine right up against my stand and I had to wait until the deer cleared the pine,” he said. “I could see antlers, and when it stepped out I knew it was a big buck. When he walked out and began walking away from me, I had a good view of his rack and knew it was Belmont Behemoth. I grunted with my voice and the buck turned quartering to me. I put the crosshairs on his shoulder and chest, shot him at 60 yards and he dropped right there.”
Arbuckle shoots a gun his dad gave him when he was 12 years old, a .26 Remington/Ruger. He kept the gun on the fallen buck to be sure he was down but he never moved again.
The buck had a rack of 11 points, an inside spread of 17 inches and weighed 185 pounds. He was estimated to be 5 ½ years old. The antlers were measured and the tape came to 155 inches.
