Alexa Hilderbrand, 14, an 8th grade student at Tallulah Academy, is an avid deer hunter who has taken several nice bucks, having downed her first one at the age of nine. She usually doesn’t get too excited when she has a chance at a nice buck. However, when the biggest one she had ever seen stepped out at 80 yards on the afternoon of Nov. 30, her nerves got to her and it was hard to settle the crosshairs of her 6.5 Creedmore on the deer’s shoulder.
“The scope just kept jumping around because my heart was beating so fast and I had trouble settling the crosshairs on its shoulder,” Alexa said. “I finally did. I shot and he jumped and kicked and took off.”
Alexa hunts on the 930-acre Wade Bayou portion of her family farm in Madison Parish where they live. She was hunting out of a ground blind that overlooked a food plot and was bordered on the left by woods, on the right by a dim road that ran through the property, and more woods next to the road.
She has fallen in love with hunting deer, and although she is an honor roll student, a junior varsity cheerleader, participates in her school’s track team and plays tennis, hunting tops her list of things she loves to do.
“I just love to sit in a deer stand, and even if I don’t shoot anything, just being out and enjoying nature is special to me,” she said.
Buck fever
On that special Saturday afternoon, however, she was faced with a challenge she had never faced before. Having hunted in South Africa with her dad two years ago and having taken a variety of wild game there, nothing had the effect on her as when this huge buck, one that neither she nor anyone else had ever seen, stepped onto the food plot she was watching.
“I got on my stand about 3:40 that afternoon and at 4:40, out of the blue, this monster buck walked from the woods, across the dim road and onto the food plot about 80 yards from me,” Alexa said. “He was walking from the woods across the food plot to the woods on the right. We don’t shoot young bucks on our property but I didn’t have to think twice; I knew this one was not young.”
Finally settling the crosshairs on the buck’s shoulder as he continued to walk toward the woods, she squeezed off a shot and watched the buck jump and kick and take off.
“I called my dad – I could hardly talk – and told him I had just shot the biggest buck I have ever seen,” she said. “I stayed in the stand until dad got there and we went down where the deer was standing and found some blood. We started following the blood trail for about 60 yards when we found him piled up behind some brush. Neither my dad, nor I, had ever seen antlers with mass that heavy. We were both super excited.”
Buck of a lifetime
The buck was taken to Delhi Feed and Supply to be scored and entered in that store’s big buck contest. The rack carried 11 points with an inside spread of 17 2/8 inches, main beams 24 and 26 inches and bases measuring an unbelievable 7 6/8 inches. The buck, estimated to be 6 ½ years old, weighed 250 pounds and the rack measured 174 6/8 inches. The buck was also entered in the Simmons Big Buck Contest in Bastrop.
“Hunting deer is my passion,” Alexa said, “but I never expected to be able to have a chance at a buck like this ever in my life.”
