For 11-year-old Harper Richard, Jan. 10 is a day she will never forget. Why? Having been chosen to participate in a youth lottery hunt on the Tensas National Wildlife Refuge, the sixth grader at Our Lady Immaculate Catholic School in Jennings got not only a doe but a huge buck as well.
We contacted her dad Jason Richard, who lives with his family in Iota, to get Harper’s story.
“Harper is a serious deer hunter and had been with me in a deer stand ever since she was 5 years old,” Richard said. “In fact, she has killed four deer already.”
Taking their camper from home, they settled in at Tensas headquarters on Jan. 9. They were accompanied by Harper’s grandfather.
“The next morning, the day of the hunt, we got up at 3:30, joined our guide, Steve, and made the drive down a muddy road to our stand where the driver dropped us off,” Richard said. “We got to our stand, a ground blind, around 5:30, and while it was still dark we heard something I had never heard, and I’ve deer hunted for years. Right behind our blind, I heard a buck grunt. Of course, we got excited.”
A choice to make
Once it was daylight, their guide pointed out some does that had come out of the thicket to feed on the food plot; they were 150 yards or so out. Youngsters selected for the lottery hunt are allowed to take both a buck and a doe so the focus at first was to get Harper a doe.
“The guide signaled us to freeze because he saw a buck right behind our blind about 40 yards,” Richard said. “The woods were too thick to shoot, the buck kept walking and she never had a chance at him.”
The morning hunt was over without Harper getting a deer. The driver came and picked the party up and took them back to headquarters. When they got there they learned that out of 20 youth hunters, they had taken 13 deer.
“We had lunch and the afternoon hunt was planned,” Richard said. “Harper had a choice to make; did she want to hunt a different stand or did she want to hunt the same one she had hunted that morning. She said she wanted to go back to the same one, so we did.”
An impressive buck
Getting back to the stand around 1:30 p.m., deer started popping out and feeding on the plot. Around 4:20, their guide pointed out a doe behind the blind, but as the deer got in a position for Harper to shoot, the unthinkable happened. Harper’s gun snapped; the bolt on her Ruger 7mm.08 was not completely closed.
“Steve put in another round and made sure the bolt was completely closed when a doe came out at 110 yards,” Richard said. “Steve told Harper to take the shot. She did. At the shot, the doe almost fell but made it to the woods where she eventually expired.”
Twenty minutes later, Steve whispered to Harper that a buck had stepped out at 120 yards. She got on him, hit the trigger and the buck dropped.
“We had no idea how big it was, just that it was a buck,” Richard said. “But when we got binoculars on him, we could see a really impressive rack.”
The buck was impressive indeed. Sporting a main frame 9-point rack with a kicker, the rack was scored as a 10-point with an 18 ½-inch inside spread. He was also determined to be 5 ½ years old and weighed 185 pounds. The buck was taken to K&K Taxidermy in Reeves to be scored and mounted. The unofficial score was 150 4/8 inches.
“I have deer hunted all my life,” Richard said “but for me this was really my hunt of a lifetime.”
