Terry Thorn killed a deer of a lifetime on Monday, Nov. 15.
He was hunting just six miles from his home in Olla in central Louisiana’s La Salle Parish. The day also seemed like a lifetime and then some. And as you’ll read, he “lived 100 years that day before it was finally over.”
The monstrous 10-point weighed 270 pounds and scored 182 7/8 and then 178 1/2 at two different sporting goods stores. Either way, it’s by the far the biggest deer the 60-year-old owner of Terry’s Glass Shop has ever seen.
The hunt was almost over for Thorn when coyotes started howling out in the cutover thicket beside his hunting spot. He looked down the shooting lane just in time to see the monster buck slip out into the open. It was the first time anybody that hunts the area had seen the deer in daylight hours in person or on a camera. They saw him on a couple of photos from deer cameras before the season, but only in the middle of the night, and they had been hunting the area for him hard.
“He was slipping away from those coyotes,” said Thorn. “I think that’s the only reason he came out. I zeroed in on him and shot. He fell right where I shot him about 140 yards from the stand. I waited a few minutes and I was pumped. He didn’t move. I was so jacked. So I got down off my stand and was walking down the shooting lane calling my wife on the cell phone and suddenly, the deer just stood up and ran off. I was in shock. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Then I was sick.”
A long night
The lifetime hunter walked into the edge of the thicket where he saw the deer leave the shooting lane. He spotted the deer go down again, but it stood up and he couldn’t get another shot, so he just watched. In a few seconds, a few bushes in the extremely thick cutover rattled and he heard a thump. The deer was down again. But Thorn wasn’t taking any more chances, so he decided to just let it lie and come back the next morning. He marked the spot and “didn’t sleep a wink.”
He closed his business for the morning and went back to the spot he last saw the deer. He was there at good daylight. There were drops of blood all over the thicket, but no deer. The monster was gone. He realized quickly that he needed help, so went and got Hank, a seasoned tracking cur dog.
Bringing in the top dog
The deer had been all over a big area in the thicket, probably getting away from the coyotes again, so even Hank had a hard time as the trail criss-crossed and circled, but he finally got close to the deer. Thorn walked to where Hank was barking, eased around the edge of a big patch of briars and there laid the deer. But true to the story, the deer stood up yet again about 20 steps away.
Thorn had brought a shotgun with him loaded with buckshot because he knew it was too thick for a rifle. He aimed and fired. This time the deer went down for good. Thorn discovered that on his first shot the afternoon before, he had hit the deer high above the shoulder.
“I literally lived 100 years that day. I went from the lowest of lows to the highest of highs,” he said. “After we got the deer, I rubbed all the hair off old Hank’s head I was so happy he had helped me find the deer. I was exhausted.”
The big deer was killed on a 250-acre plot of land that Thorn and his family lease for hunting each year. He felt like since no other hunters anywhere near had even seen the deer on camera, it had just homesteaded in that cutover the past three years. The big deer was estimated to be at least six and a half years old.
“Man, I’m still jacked,” Thorn said. “I actually killed the deer on my son-in-law’s stand while he was at work. But hey, he’s pumped, too. Wow. The deer. The story. It’s just all you could ever hope for.”