Kim Greer of Calhoun hunts on hunt-club land in Madison Parish where the rule is, you can only kill two bucks per season, and they have to be at least 5 years old.
“I’m always worried about shooting a young deer,” she admitted.
But when a big buck stepped out in a logging road 70 yards away from her box stand the afternoon of Jan. 16, there was no doubt that it was a shooter.
Weighing 240 pounds and carrying a rack that measured 165 5/8 inches, yep, he was a shooter, and she knew it.
“We knew this deer was on our club, but my husband and I didn’t have any picture of him on our cameras — except the day before I killed him,” Greer said. “A lot of guys in the club had pictures of him, but he was only coming out at night.”
In her stand that afternoon, she had seen plenty of does, plus a 6-point buck and a spike buck, and at 5:25, when she looked down the road to her left, out stepped a big buck, 70 yards away.
Where we hunt, a buck has to be 5 years or older before you can kill him,” she said. “I picked up my binoculars and looked before I got my gun up. I knew he was big enough, but I didn’t know how big, because I could only see one side.
“I got my gun out the window, but he turned and was going to go down the road, but when he turned back, I saw the other side, and I knew I had to shoot.”
Definitely big enough
Using her husband Mickey’s Browning .30-06 that day because her own 7mm-08 was in need of a new scope, she pulled the trigger, and the buck turned and raced back into the woods.
“I texted my husband, ‘Big buck down,’” she said. “What I didn’t know was another guy in our club was hunting 400 or 500 yards away, down that road, and he watched the whole thing in his binoculars. He had been hunting that buck for a while. He texted my husband, ‘Kim just shot the big one.’
“I wanted to get down and go look for him, but my husband wanted me to wait until everybody got finished, so we finally went down there, but we didn’t see any blood. We were walking in the woods and didn’t find a drop. Then, the guy who had watched came down and showed me this little grass patch, a little CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) patch that they used to flood for ducks, that’s gotten all grown up, and he had run in there. He didn’t start bleeding until right before he fell. He probably went 40 yards.
“That was when I really saw how big he was. I’m glad I didn’t know when I shot him him, because I’d have probably been shaking too much.”
Greer believes the buck had been bedding in that CRP patch, had risen that afternoon and walked the 40 yards to the road before she shot him.
“He wasn’t chasing a doe or anything,” she said.
Greer’s giant buck
Greer’s buck carried a main-frame 4×5 rack with double split brow tines; the split on the right brow tine was broken off, but the buck still scored as an 11-pointer. Cecil Reddick, a local scorer for Buckmasters, put a tape on the buck and came up with 165 5/8 inches, including 22 1/8-inch inside spread, a 26 6/8-inch main beam on the left side, and bases that were 5 3/8 and 5 2/8 inches in circumference.
Obviously, it was Greer’s biggest buck ever, but it also put her in the lead in the husband vs. wife category. Mickey Greer took a 157 3/8-inch buck last season, on Jan. 10, in Madison Parish.