It was a Thursday night in late August. I was up in my office working. As I tend to do more frequently as hunting season approaches, I picked up my phone and opened the Tactacam app. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.
My exact text at 11:41 p.m. to the boys’ chat: “Oh, my gosh. We have a booner…”
Although we get bucks like this on our property in Madison Parish almost every year, I just felt like this was a fluke pass-by from a dream buck. I didn’t expect much more than this temporary moment of excitement. 
The rest of August and throughout September, this buck only showed up on camera a couple of times. Then, out of nowhere, on Sept. 30, we got one picture of the buck jogging across a camera half a mile across the property. He had lost his velvet, and it was the day before bow season.
At the time, my wife and I were on a 6-week trip to Colorado for elk season and work. I couldn’t wait to get back to Louisiana to get busy finding this buck. I was beginning to formulate a plan in my mind where I could set additional cameras and where I could start hunting to get on him. We got back home to Louisiana on Oct. 15.
The week we were returning home, the buck started showing up around the clock – and multiple times during daylight. I told my father-in-law “We have a 13-point daylighting every day and I have to go try to put my eyes on this buck.”
After seeing the pictures, he said, “yes, you need to be in the woods.”
My response: “I’ll tell your daughter that.”
Around 10 p.m. on Oct. 16, I left for the hunting camp with my best friend, Kevin. I had one goal in mind: put eyes on this buck without spooking him.
That weekend we had a cold front blowing in with strong north winds. Having no stands set and no idea where this buck may come from, we sat in the overgrown weeds underneath a box stand 100 yards from the camera he was frequenting.
Saturday morning was exciting – we had a doe at 10 yards from our ground set – but no buck. The afternoon hunt started off fast. We had four deer in sight within 15 minutes of getting set up in our makeshift ground blind.
Three or four minutes pass and we hear movement off to our right. I see two deer walking through the trees, but as hard as I tried, I just couldn’t get my eyes on them well. They disappeared for a few seconds, then I saw a small buck step out of the woods – it was the small 6 our target buck was always with! Then, as I’m looking at the 6-point through my binoculars, I see our target buck walk out behind him.
We only had one problem on our hands. He was 93 yards away.
As I predicted, the buck ran the does and fawns away, and they disappeared into a nearby thicket. It was then I realized, if this buck walks into the thicket, I’ve got to make a move and press forward.
Chaos ensued.
The small 6-point and the target buck began acting uneasy. They were looking back behind them where they had come from only a few minutes earlier. Without warning, they abruptly walked off and disappeared into the thicket behind the does.
I looked at Kevin and said, “stay here, I’m moving up.”
As I’m hurriedly creeping forward trying to close the distance in case the bucks walk back out, I look up and there’s ANOTHER buck walking out of the woods and he looks straight at me. Halfway standing up in the grass, I just wasn’t hidden enough. He took off and got out of dodge, luckily not blowing and alerting the rest of the deer around us.
I move forward a few more steps, and I’m sitting in the grass next to a small tree when I start hearing the deer moving through the thicket. I’m looking over my left shoulder thinking they may walk out right into my lap, but when I look back ahead, the target buck is standing back in the road! I never even heard him.
He starts walking away from me. I took a few more steps and got cover in the grass next to another small tree. A few seconds after getting settled, the small 6 walked back out after him.
The big buck stopped and started feeding. I ranged him at 64 yards. This was definitely further than I would have liked, but I knew I was more than capable of an accurate shot.
From my knees, I came to full draw. Once there, I almost rushed my shot and just let it fly, but I was able to stop myself and calm down.
I released a perfect arrow. As if in slow motion, I watched that lighted red nock fly and land exactly where I was aiming. It felt like a perfect shot. I jumped out of the grass and ran back to our setup on the ground.
“I just killed a monster,” is all I could say. Kevin and I ran to the kill site. Ten steps away from where the buck was standing was a pile of blood. There was blood in the leaves and blood all over the tree he ran by. I just knew that buck was dead. We backed out, gave it a few more minutes to settle down, and at 6:27 p.m. we found the deer expired. He had run about 75 yards.
What started out as a mid-October low-risk observation sit turned into two best friends harvesting one of the most unique bucks to ever walk our property in Madison Parish.
The buck had 13 scoreable points and weighed 280 pounds. It unofficially scored 168.
-Sidney Aulds
