The buck with the rocking chair set of antlers Mia Grant had been seeing on her cameras had only shown himself after dark. The calendar noted that there was a full moon on Oct. 6, and 26-year-old Mia Grant had a feeling that because the Harvest Moon was beginning to make its appearance, she might get to see her quarry before legal shooting time ended.
That is exactly what happened. Just minutes before shooting hours came to an end, there he stood. Her Excalibur crossbow did the trick, dropping the buck in its tracks at 30 yards.
“I hunt on a 90 acre tract of land in north Caddo Parish, land a friend has given me permission to hunt,” Grant said. “The spot where I placed my ground blind is the only portion of the property that has timber; there is farm land surrounding it. I call it my honey hole.”
Grant, who lives near Dixie Inn in Webster Parish and has plans to attend LSU-Shreveport to pursue a degree in finance, prefers to hunt alone, and after locating the buck with the massive rack, she was on her stand every chance she got.
“I got in my ground blind around 2:30 the afternoon of Oct. 6 and was a little worried because I spooked two deer that were already feeding on the corn I had put out in front of my stand,” she said. “The only way I can reach the stand is to walk by my corn pile, and I was hopeful that other deer wouldn’t be alarmed.”
An impressive buck
Noticing the full moon starting to make its way above the horizon, Grant felt confident, but she also was a bit concerned because she looked down at her phone to check the time legal hunting was to end and she knew she only had a few minutes to hunt.
“I was checking my phone, I looked up and there he stood,” she said. “I started getting nervous but I remembered the suggestion my grandfather – I call him ‘pawpaw’ – had always told me. Just take deep breaths and try to relax, and that’s what I did.
“The buck was standing there at 30 yards. I got my crossbow on him, hit the trigger and he dropped dead on the spot. I started crying and saying ‘thank you God.’ I had finally been able to take down the buck I had dreamed about for so long.”
Calling her dad to tell him what had happened, she knew she wouldn’t be able to depend on his help because he was back home in Dixie Inn. However, her sister and boyfriend were nearby, they came and helped her drag the buck out of the woods.
“What was really neat is that my pawpaw and 97-year-old grandmother were able to come and be there when we skinned and dressed the deer,” she said.
The buck sported a nontypical rack of 21 points, had a 20 ½-inch inside spread, was determined to be 4 ½ years old and weighed 160 pounds. She took the buck to Simmons Sporting Goods in Bastrop to have it measured and entered in that store’s big buck contest. Simmons measured the rack at a whopping 205 inches of antler.
