His nickname was Samson.
A huge whitetail buck living near Echo Swamp in Rapides Parish, he was sort of a Christmas present for hunter Thomas Broadway of Morrow, who killed him on the afternoon of Dec. 25.
Except that Broadway wasn’t “really” hunting, wasn’t looking to kill the buck – he wanted his son to tag the bruiser – and he considered the deer almost “a part of the family.”
Of course, he doesn’t regret pulling the trigger, not with the buck carrying a main-frame 9-point rack with three non-typical points that measured 184 gross inches. But when next season rolls around, it’s likely Broadway will miss the thrill of waiting for the buck to show up on trail cameras for a fifth autumn.
“This was kind of a spiritual thing for me,” he admitted.
Samson carried a 6 ½-inch drop tine on his right beam, a split brow tine on his right beam, a split G2 on his right beam and a sticker point on the base of his left beam, 27 ¾-inch main beams and a 22 ¾-inch inside spread.
“We hunted him since 2020, and we saw him first in 2019,” said Broadway, a 56-year-old sawmill operator. “He got bigger and bigger every year until this year. Last year, he was a perfect 10. This year, he sort of went down a little, but he had the drop tine and the split brow tine.”
Dad gets credit
Broadway’s family has had the land where the big buck was killed for about 20 years. He credited his father, Travis Broadway, with a run of tremendous management and selective harvesting.
“My dad gets all the credit for this buck,” said Broadway, who said his father has put in a tremendous management plan. He’s confident the family watched Samson’s grandfather – a huge, wide buck named Stickers – and his father – a 168-inch buck killed by a neighbor in 2018. “He’s a product of my father’s hard work. There was no mistaking the frames of those bucks.”
Broadway killed a 170-inch deer in Missouri earlier and wanted his son, Josh, 26, to kill Samson.
“I spent most of the season trying to get him for Josh,” Broadway said. “I wasn’t even hunting when I killed him; I was just killing time. I left my hunting bag and my binoculars on my bike, and then I shot a big hog walking to my stand, where I was just going to park my butt for 2 ½ hours and listen for Josh to shoot.
With only one bullet, he wasn’t even thinking about hunting. He got to the stand and said a doe came out and after a few minutes, she threw up her tail and took off. He knew something was coming. A couple of seconds later, Samson appeared, 35 to 40 yards from Broadway in the shooting lane the farthest to his left.
Daylight appearance
It was the first time in four years anybody saw him in the daylight, but the big deer busted Broadway and took off. The doe showed up in another shooing lane, though, and Samson was right behind her. Broadway was ready and just as he squeezed the trigger on his .300 Win Mag, the deer moved.
He waited a few minutes, then walked back to his bike to get more bullets and began to look for the deer.
“I know you wait and don’t push the deer, but I was excited,” he said. “I broke the cardinal rule.”
After walking into the woods, the deer bounced up about 40 or 50 yards away. All he could see in the palmettos was the rack. It was going to be cold and the meat would be okay, so he just went home.
“I came back the next morning, and took the dog, and we went to the first place I found blood, but the dog wanted to go back on the trail to the spot I first shot him,” Broadway said. “Josh took up the trail with his girlfriend, and he found some more blood about 10 yards from where I found it, and we let the dog go. He took off. He had a 20-foot orange lead on, and the dog was about 40 yards in front of Josh when I saw that orange lead sticking out behind a tree, and I knew he’d found him.”
