
When a 6-point buck stood without moving for three or four minutes, Hannah Loker, a real estate broker who lives in Frierson, texted her husband that she knew she was about to shoot a big 10-point they had on their cameras and he would soon hear her shoot.
“I just felt that something was about to happen and felt confident that my target buck would step out at any minute,” Loker said. “He did, and I got him.”
They had been seeing the buck on cameras for the past two years and he was impressive the first year he appeared. Last year, however, the rack was messed up on one side. This year, whatever the problem was had corrected itself and he was impressive enough to take if it presented itself. The family tries not to take bucks until they are at least 4 years old.
“We hunt on our family land, a farm in Red River Parish, and we lease farming rights to a farmer who plants soy beans,” Loker said. “My husband and I had both hunted the big 10 hard and on the afternoon of Nov. 20, I was the fortunate one to be on stand when he stepped out.”
Skittish deer
Hunting out of a box stand, there is a lane cut through the woods where they have planted winter wheat with a feeder on the lane. Once soy beans had been harvested at the end of summer, that food source had been depleted and the deer on the property were interested in something else. In this case, the winter wheat growing on the lane.
“I got in my stand around 3 p.m. the afternoon of Nov. 20, and the weather had cooled down as a front had come through the night before,” Loker said. “Not long after getting on the stand, several small bucks appeared to graze the wheat, but I noticed that they all seemed somewhat nervous. Then a big 6-point appeared at the end of the lane and just stood there on full alert for at least three or four minutes. I texted my husband telling him to get ready to hear me shoot because from the way the deer were acting, I expected the big 10-point to show up at any moment.”
An impressive buck
Using her binoculars to scan the nearby woods, the trees were too thick to see the full bodies of any deer, but she would be able to see the legs and feet of deer walking in the woods.
“Sure enough, I began seeing the legs of a deer walking toward the lane, and when it lowered its head to sniff the ground I could tell it was a big buck,” she said. “I put my binoculars away and picked up my rifle; I shoot a Browning X-bolt 30.06. He stepped out at 140 yards but stopped behind the feeder. It wasn’t until he turned broadside and began making a scrape that I could be sure it was the 10, so I put the scope on him, hit the trigger and he cartwheeled and headed for the woods.”
Loker texted her husband, who told her to just sit tight until he got there. He found the buck where it had fallen at the edge of the lane.
The buck sported a main frame 10-point rack with a small kicker off a G-2 not long enough to count, so the buck was scored as a 10-point. The heavy rack with mass throughout and long main beams had an inside spread of 18 inches and was judged to be 7 ½ years old. He tipped the scales at 221 pounds and the rack was measured at 163 inches.
“This area along the Red River has good habitat and mature bucks typically weigh at least 200 pounds,” Loker said. “A couple of years ago, I shot a big bodied 8-point that scored over 140 inches.”