Walt Bordelon doesn’t need to join a hunting club of thousands of acres to be successful. He hunts a tiny, 15 acre piece of ground, land that he owns behind his home in Moreauville in Avoyelles Parish.
Bordelon, 39, works for Union Pacific Railroad, and after he got off work on Monday afternoon, Oct. 19, he sat for a while trying to make up his mind if he should walk out the back door and go to his stand.
“It was hot that afternoon, 86 degrees, and I knew the mosquitoes would give me fits,” Bordelon said. “However, I checked the wind direction; (it was) out of the southeast, which would be just right for my stand, so I decided to grab my bow and give it a try.”
Last year, Bordelon hunted the stand all season and never saw a deer, not the first one. However, for the past two weeks, his trail camera had captured photos of a big buck — but only at night. He climbed into his lock-on stand around 5:20, and his prediction was spot on; mosquitoes began giving him fits, but at least the wind was right.
“My stand is on property my grandfather used to farm, but I’ve allowed it to grow up,” he said. “It overlooks a food plot that has a patch of trees on one side and tall grass on the other.”
On a mission
Bordelon had seen a few does on hunts earlier in the season but had let them pass because of the big buck that was captured on camera.
“Around 6:30, I saw movement on my food plot and looked to (see) three raccoons,” Bordelon said. “I watched them for a while, and then, suddenly, they all took off running off the plot. I knew they had seen or heard something. The right side of the food plot is blocked by limbs, so I looked through some limbs and saw the ears of a deer. I had no idea if it was a buck or doe. There is a little pinch point on the food plot where I feed rice bran, and when the deer walked around the point, I saw antlers and knew it was the one I had on camera. He stopped at 30 yards, and I decided to let him come on closer. When he got to 15 yards, I released my arrow, and he took off.”
Seeing the deer slowing to a walk in the weeds some 60 yards away, Bordelon sat back down to settle his nerves and called a friend, Jade Lambert, who came with his son, Cole, to help Bordelon track his buck.
“There was plenty of blood where I shot with an easy blood trail to follow,” said Bordelon, who shoots a Matthews bow with a carbon arrow and Shuttle T-Lok broadhead. “We walked up on him, piled up right where I’d last seen him walking, 60 yards from my stand.”
Backyard buck
The buck was a dandy, sporting a rack of 16 points, with sticker points all over. The rough score was 143 inches, and in addition to all the points, the buck had massive bases of 6 inches each, with an inside spread of 14 5/8 inches. The deer tipped the scales at 225 pounds; Bordelon estimated he was 4½ years old.
“This is the only place I hunt,” Bordelon said, “and to think I got the biggest buck I ever killed right here in my backyard.”