Archery season for deer opened on Oct. 1 and Farmerville’s Dan Preaus was anxious to be in his stand on his Union Parish hunting club to pursue a big buck he has had on trail cameras since last year. But as excited as he was to get to bow hunt, he waited until the fourth day of the season, Tuesday, Oct. 3, before deciding to climb aboard his ladder stand.
“This area where I had found the deer on camera this year is so open and I needed the right wind to give me a shot at hunting him without being detected,” Preaus said. “There was a light southeast wind on Tuesday and this is the wind direction I was looking for.”
The owner of Shelter Insurance Agency in Ruston, 43-year-old Preaus took the afternoon off to take advantage of the right wind for his set-up. His planning paid off.
“I got to my stand around 4:00 that afternoon,” he said. “The stand sits in an area of 25-year-old thinned pines with lots of underbrush, a prime spot for deer to bed. In order to conceal myself better, I cut some limbs and hung them behind where I was sitting to silhouette me, because otherwise I would have stood out and been easy for a deer to make out.”
Eyes on the hunter
Around 4:45, three spikes came onto the opening Preaus was watching to feed on the rice bran he had placed there. A few minutes later, a mature doe walked up with her head in the air and Preaus felt for sure he had been detected. However, she finally settled down, and a few minutes later all the deer stopped feeding to look back in the woods in the direction the doe had come from.
“I felt that they were hearing the approach of another deer and then I spotted a nice buck coming up on the same trail where the doe had walked,” Preaus said. “Then he stopped, put his head up testing the wind and I could see it was the one I had on camera. About that time, the doe started acting nervous and I thought this time it was over. However, she settled down, but the buck stood back in the woods probably 15 minutes without moving.
“He finally moved, circled back and then started walking toward the other deer. I became concerned about when I could safely draw my bow with four sets of eyes right in front of me. But they were interested in the buck, which came on in, put his head down in the rice bran and looked the other direction, giving me time to draw my bow.”
Crashing down
Preaus shoots a 20-year-old Matthews Legacy bow armed with a Hammerhead broadhead. He got the sight lined up at 23 yards and released the arrow, feeling he had made a good hit. Preaus could hear the deer crash down about 65 yards away.
The buck sported a symmetrical rack of 8 points with an inside spread of 15 4/8 inches. Main beams were 24 inches each, G2s were 10 and 11 inches with 4 ½ inch bases. The buck was estimated to be 4 ½ years old and weighed around 175 pounds. Buckmaster official scorer Greg Hicks put the tape on the buck that measured 141 5/8 inches.
Waiting on a favorable wind to hunt proved to be the ticket for Preaus in arrowing this cautious Union Parish buck.