Several years ago, First Baptist Church in Haughton held a Big Buck Contest, and the winner overall was a pre-teen girl named Addi Small. She came home with a 6.5 Creedmore, a gun she has used consistently ever since.
Since Addi is in school, an 8th grader at Haughton Middle School, we talked with her dad, Justin Small, who was with her on the afternoon of Nov. 30 when she put the Creedmore to good use by downing a big buck no one had ever seen nor had on camera.
Addi is involved in volleyball, basketball and softball at school and is a member of the National Honor Society.
“We were hunting behind my parent’s home in Haughton in Bossier Parish,” Justin Small said. “At 3:00 that afternoon, she called me and asked if we could go hunting. Her older sister had killed a buck the day before and the spirit of competition kicked in. I agreed and checked to see if anyone was hunting on my favorite stand and learned my nephew was on that stand, so we had to hunt a different stand, one we had never hunted. In fact, I had to call my dad to find out exactly where the stand was located.”
Plenty of activity
It was 4:20 p.m. before they made it back to the stand. They had to sneak in carefully because there were four does on the food plot.
“The stand is a tripod with room for both us to sit,” Justin Small said. “We were fortunate that we hadn’t spooked the does, so we watched them awhile before they drifted on off into the woods. At 4:50, another doe came onto the food plot from a different direction and Addi got her gun up and ready in case a buck was following. Five minutes later, we could see the rack on a big buck as it stepped out to follow the doe. Fifteen seconds after spotting the buck, Addi dropped him in his tracks, but as it tried to get up, she put him down with another shot.”
This was a buck nobody had ever had on cameras and was a complete surprise to the Smalls. The buck was taken to Simmons Sporting Goods to enter in that store’s Big Buck Contest. The rack consisted of 11 points with an inside spread of 19 6/9 inches. The big-bodied buck weighed around 240 pounds and was judged to have been 6 ½ years old. Simmons scored the rack at 172 3/8 inches.
Justin Small is a dad who is proud of his daughters and the bond they share, especially when he’s with them on a deer stand.
“My baby girl has far surpassed me in the big buck category,” he said. “Being the father of girls and hunting with them is priceless. Seeing either of my girls take great ethical shots and get so excited far surpasses the joy of killing one myself. One day, they’ll be married off and I’ll have to hunt by myself again, but until then, the trigger is all theirs.”
