When Hannah Odom, a 17-year-old senior at Delhi Charter School, dropped a trophy buck in his tracks at 186 yards, what did her dad, sitting with her and watching it all take place, do?
“I hugged her and teared up,” said her dad, Josh Odom, who works for a pipeline transmission company.
The buck was one that had been on trail cameras starting in August. The Odom’s belong to a 700 acre hunting club in Madison Parish. The box stand on which the pair were sitting overlooks food plots to the east and west with a thick CRP to the north and a stand of hardwoods to the south. The food plots are planted with rye grass and a wildlife mixture to attract deer.
“We got on the stand around 3:00 the afternoon of Dec. 17 and got settled in with Hannah in one chair and me in the other,” Odom said. “Along about 4:00, we watched three does come out of the CRP and crossed a food plot without stopping to feed. I ranged the distance at 186 yards.”
The pair began hearing noises coming from the CRP, the sound of bucks clashing antlers with some grunts added in.
“I asked Hannah if she heard the noises coming from the CRP and she said she did,” Odom said.
In her sights
The father and daughter were on high alert because of the expectation that the sounds of bucks fighting indicated that perhaps a good buck would soon be stepping out, and that is exactly what happened.
“Right around 5:00 we looked and a big buck stepped onto the food plot at 100 yards,” Odom said. “I knew it was the big one we had on camera since August but I didn’t want to mention it to Hannah because I knew it would start playing on her nerves.”
The problem was when the buck stepped out, it began walking straight away down the food plot.
“I told Hannah to hand me her rifle so I could put it on the deer once it gave her a chance for a shot,” Odom said. “She tried to lean over to where I was sitting but I thought it best that we just swap seats, which we did.”
The buck continued to walk straight away as Hannah tried to keep up with him in the scope. Finally when the buck got to where the two does had crossed, he stopped, began sniffing the ground and turned.
“Dad, he’s turned broadside,” an excited Hannah whispered to her dad.
Odom instructed her to take her time, hold it on his shoulder and when she was ready, to squeeze the trigger. Hannah was shooting a 6.5 Creedmore rifle.
“As soon as she shot, the deer just dropped in his tracks and she looked at me, eyes wide with excitement and said ‘oh my gosh…I got him!’” Odom said. “I told her that she had just shot a giant of a deer.”
A great memory
Odom exited the stand first and began walked toward the downed buck. Once he was sure it was down for good, he beckoned Hannah to join him and they walked up to where the big buck lay.
The buck was taken to Simmons Sporting Goods to enter in that store’s big buck contest and the score was right at 150 inches. Sporting an 8 point rack with a 19 ¼-inch spread and 6-inch bases, the buck, aged at 5 ½ years weighed 200 pounds.
This is not Hannah’s first deer, having taken several does and has a smaller 8-point mounted on her wall. However, the future Physical Therapy student at the University of Louisiana Monroe will be hard pressed to match the one she got while sharing a deer stand with her dad.