John Holladay, 61, lives in the Kelly community of Caldwell Parish and works for Energy Transfer Co. in the pipeline industry. He doesn’t have far to travel to get on his deer stand; it’s behind his house on the 100 acres he owns.
“I found this buck on my trail cameras last year and he was probably a 160-inch buck then,” Holladay said. “I would have gladly shot him if I had the chance. However, I never saw him.”
This year, when deer season opened, Holladay had the buck on one of his cameras in November. In order to learn more about the buck and when he was likely to show up, Holladay did something rather unconventional.
“I put out eight cameras in the area where he showed up with the idea of having a better idea of the size of this buck and his travel tendencies,” Holladay said.
Prior to climbing into his box stand on the afternoon of Dec. 3, Holladay checked his cameras and found one photo of a buck chasing a doe, but the picture was not clear enough to positively say if it was the big one.
Holladay hunts out of a box stand that sits in open hardwoods next to a growth of pines, and adjacent to the woods was a hayfield.
“I had hunted just about every afternoon after work and I had decided that if I didn’t see something pretty quick, I might just call it a day,” he said.
The buck shows up
About 3:15, Holladay saw a small buck run a doe across out in front of him. He was encouraged that at least he was seeing something. At 5:15, a doe shot across an opening in the woods with the big buck right behind her.
“He was moving so fast after her that I couldn’t get a shot on him as he disappeared and I started watching the hayfield, figuring that maybe he’d chase the doe that way,” Holladay said. “It didn’t happen that way, because suddenly the doe came back through the hardwoods and I saw the buck right behind her.
“He stopped in a small opening where I could see part of his rack and his shoulder. I got on his shoulder with my .35 Whelan, pulled the trigger and he just disappeared. I had no idea which way he ran.”
After sitting for about 10 minutes and listening for any sound that would give him a clue, it had gotten dark and Holladay walked back to his house for his flashlight. Then he headed back to the area where the deer had been shot.
“I looked for a long time around the area where he was standing when I shot and could find no evidence of blood, upturned leaves or anything to indicate I had hit the deer,” he said. “I was starting to get afraid that maybe I had missed.”
What a deer

There is a small lane that Holladay keeps mowed with his lawn mower and he started looking along that lane.
“I shined my light to the left and he was laying 10 feet off the lane having run about 40 yards after the shot,” Holladay said. “My first thought when I walked up to him was ‘my Lord; what a deer!’”
Indeed, it was an impressive buck sporting a rack of 14 points with an inside spread of 18 inches. G2s were 13 and 14 inches each with main beams a whopping 26 and 27 inches. Bases were 5 inches. The buck weighed 200 pounds and was aged at 5 ½ years old. Taking the buck to Greg Hicks, official Buckmaster’s scorer, the tape came to an eye-popping 190 6/8 inches.
Interestingly, the potential state record buck killed by Tyler Jordan that scored 192 3/8 was taken on Honey Brake, which as the crow flies is about 40 miles from where Holladay killed his buck.
Holladay feels that bucks in his area are large mainly because of genetics, with one taken near him a couple of years ago that measured 180 inches.