Chelsea Cauthron, who works as a nurse in surgical tech, lives in Lacassine with her husband, Blaze, and they hunt on a hunting club in Beauregard Parish.
She and her husband both had an interest in a particular buck, one with a high and wide rack. Interestingly, no one had ever actually laid eyes on the buck nicknamed “Trigger,” who had only revealed himself via trail cameras.
On the afternoon of Nov. 28, Cauthron and her husband made the 45 minute drive to the hunting club, she on one stand and he on another.
“We felt that maybe one of us might get lucky and have a chance at Trigger, so we settled into our stands around 3:00 that afternoon,” she said.
Over the two years that Trigger had appeared on cameras, his rack grew impressively. From the first photos, the buck was a main frame 7-point. This season, he had ballooned to a fine 12-point buck.
“I was hunting in a ground blind and was looking at an old fire lane out front that served as a shooting lane,” Cauthron said. “We had scattered corn on the ground to attract any deer that might be in the area.”
Nervous young bucks
Soon after settling into her stand, Cauthron could hear a ruckus in the woods nearby, as if a buck was chasing a doe. However, it was not until after 5 p.m. that she watched two small bucks, a spike and a button buck, emerge from the woods and head to the corn on the ground.
“Soon after these two deer came out, I noticed that they were acting nervous and kept looking back into the woods,” she said. “Then they took off like something had spooked them. It was about that time that I could see a tall rack emerging from the brush and my heart went into overdrive because I suspected it might be Trigger. When he stepped into the lane, there was no doubt this was the one we were after.”
The buck stopped at about 70 yards and was looking directly at her blind. She had made up her mind that as soon as he lowered his head she would get on him with her Remington .700 270 short mag.
“As soon as he dropped his head, I put the crosshairs on his shoulder and hit the trigger,” she said. “He dropped dead on the spot. I couldn’t believe I had actually finally got him. I called my husband, he came over and we walked down to where the buck of our dreams lay dead at our feet.”
Impressive buck
The rack was more impressive than the trail cameras had shown. One of his tines had broken off, probably from fighting, and the rack contained 11 scoreable points. He had an inside spread of 18 inches with heavy mass throughout and with G2s and G3s measuring 12 and 13 inches each.
The buck had lost weight from chasing does and weighed 175 pounds. He was 5 ½ years old and was rough scored at 164 7/8 inches of mass.
“My husband and I were hoping that one or the other of us would get to connect with the buck,” Cauthron said, “and I was the lucky one to have Trigger give me the chance.”
