Full-velvet Avoyelles Parish buck has 13 points, scores 170
Lightning didn’t strike Glendon Normand twice in the same place – but almost.
In late December 2018, Normand killed a huge, 10-point buck that scored 175 ⅝ typical points and placed among the biggest bucks in Louisiana history.
On Saturday, Sept. 12, he killed a giant, 13-point non-typical buck in full velvet that measures around 170.
That’s some serious thunder for one deer hunter. They didn’t come from the same place – just close.
Normand, a 50-year-old contractor, took his 2018 buck on a 1,200-acre tract in Avoyelles Parish that he shared with a handful of other hunters. His newest buck came from an adjoining piece of property that Normand bought three years ago, selling out of the other lease to purchase his own place.
Normand killed the full-velvet trophy on the first day of a special early archery season that opened this year in areas that are part of one of Louisiana’s CWD (chronic wasting disease) management areas.
“I really started bowhunting when we got this property three years ago. Now, all we do is bowhunt,” Normand said. “I used to bowhunt during bow season and shoot a rifle during rifle season, but since I started bowhunting, totally, I don’t shoot a rifle any more. I am sold out on that.
Hit list buck
Normand arrowed the big buck around 5:30 in the afternoon, after sitting in a ladder stand that overlooked a trail between a cutover and a large CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) field. He had gotten in the stand around 12:30 and survived 5 hours of summer heat to get his shot.
“We run (trail) cameras year-round, and that’s how I found him,” Normand said. “He was just walking along this trail, not hurrying anywhere. A couple of weeks ago, he really started working on that trail, and I put him on my hit list.
“He was staying in a big cutover, bedding in there, and coming into a CRP area. I found the trail and put up a ladder stand.”
Normand was using a Mathews V327 bow, a 300-grain Easton arrow and a Mega Meat G5 broadhead when the buck showed up on the trail, working his way.
“I let him come on – he was just coming up the trail. I got a good, clean shot – right on the edge of the CRP field but still in the woods,” he said. “I waited until I got a quartering-away shot, 27 yards. When I hit him, he bucked up and took off. When I got down, I found a little bit of blood, but I never really got on him.
“I called a friend of mine (Chase Ardoin) who has some dogs, and they found him about an hour later. He went about 100 yards from where I had stopped looking, about 200 yards total.”
A special hunt
Normand thinks his shot ranged a little forward of where it was intended to strike, but it struck the buck right behind the shoulder and cut through its liver, not getting all the way through his body.
“He was really bleeding on the inside, but (the arrow) didn’t go all the way through. I didn’t get a pass-through,” he said. “And we never found the arrow. It must have come out somewhere between the shot and where he fell.
“When we found him, there was a lot of whooping and hollering. We got to him pretty quick – we didn’t want the velvet to go bad.”
Normand had known the buck was special from the trail-camera shots, but he really understood what he had tagged when he got a good, up-close look. The buck weighed 206 pounds on the hoof and carried a 5×5 frame with three sticker points on the left beam – two jutting from a single base on the beam between the brow tine and the first long tine (G2), and another big sticker point just behind the G2, pointing up and backwards.
“He had 22 ½-inch main beams, 10-inch G2s and a 20-inch inside spread,” Normand said.
