When a huge buck stepped out on his Union Parish Horse Trough Hunting Club, 63-year-old Ralph Tucker of Athens was shocked.
“I didn’t have this buck on my camera and had no idea that there was one that big on our club,” Tucker said.
What Tucker didn’t know, nor did one of his two cousins, Brandon and Brent, with which he shares the club, was that Brandon did have photos of the buck on his camera but he remained silent about it, not sharing what he was seeing with Tucker and Brent.
Tucker works for Jones Environmental in Bossier City and on the afternoon of Nov. 15, he was on vacation and had planned to hunt that week.
“I usually hunt mornings and had been invited to go over to spend the night with a cousin and hunt the next morning,” he said. “I decided to hunt that afternoon, spend that night and hunt the next morning.”
Plenty of food
Tucker hunts from a box stand overlooking a pipeline where winter wheat and oats had been planted. He also had out a corn feeder out from his stand.
“I got on my stand about 3:00 that afternoon and had sat about an hour when I looked in my mirror I have on my stand that allows me to see what’s behind me,” he said. “I saw this big buck in the mirror, turned around, got my binoculars out and put my gun out that window, but by the time I got set, the deer had vanished. I waited awhile to see if he’d come back but he never did.”
It was getting late in the afternoon, but at about 5:15 Tucker saw a doe come out in front of his stand and head for the corn feeder. Turning around again and putting his gun out that window, the doe suddenly ran off the line.
“About the time she left, I saw a big dark blob start to come out of the woods, got my binoculars on him and realized it was that big buck,” he said. “I cocked the hammer on my Thompson Center Pro Hunter 7mm mag and hit the trigger. Then something horrible happened. The gun snapped.”
Second chance pays
Quickly cocking the gun again as the buck apparently didn’t hear the “snap,” he got on the deer and this time it fired. The deer fell, got up and then took off.
“I didn’t find blood where he was standing but I checked the way he ran and saw blood on bushes two to three feet high,” Tucker said. “I called Brent, who was hunting nearby, to come help me find the deer. He came with his dog and then Brandon showed up. He asked me to describe the buck and showed me a picture he had, and sure enough it was the same one. He just hadn’t told me or Brent about it.”
The buck only ran about 40 yards where they found him piled up. The buck sported a symmetrical rack of 10 points with an 18 ½ inch inside spread, long main beams and heavy mast. Estimated weight was 200 pounds and age was 5 ½ years. The rack measured 155 inches.
“To kill this buck that only Brandon knew about and being fortunate enough to get off a shot after the first one snapped,” Tucker said, “was something else.