Boyce hunt was strange by any measure.
What’s in a name?
Well, if you’re Hunter Simoneaux, quite a bit, apparently. He’s been hunting deer since he was 6 years old. And now, as part of a group of friends and family that hunts on 1,100 acres just north of Alexandria, he prides himself on doing everything by the book, and then some.
For instance, on this particular spread of land it was decided that deer have to be 4 ½ years or older to be taken. But it was the simplicity of the hunt on Oct. 30 that is sure to have Simoneaux and company talking for a very long time.
After a day of work in East Texas, he drove straight to River Rouge Plantation in Boyce, arriving by 6 p.m. Simoneaux estimated he was approximately 200 yards from his truck, slowly walking toward a spot where a 10-point buck had been spotted only days earlier.
He stopped to avoid a patch of dead leaves, and when he looked up there was a large deer about 150 yards away.
Simoneaux raised his Browning 300 X Bolt to his shoulder and spied through the scope a buck that appeared larger than the 10-point he hoped to encounter.
One squeeze of the trigger later, and the 23-year old Opelousas resident had killed the biggest buck of his life. This one was a 12-point deer that scored at 142 inches and “could have been in the mid-150s,” if part of his G3 hadn’t broken off before the kill.
The deer weighed in at a whopping 210 pounds.
“It was really strange,” Simoneaux said. “The deer was walking straight toward me. I’m shaking, and I’m thinking that he’s a shooter. At about 130 yards, he put his head to the ground to make a scrape. I fell to my knees and took a deep breath to try to calm down. I put it on him and I dropped him right there.”
He said the kill showed just how unpredictable hunting can be.
“We try to do everything right. We hunt the wind, look at the little things. But this was completely unplanned,” Simoneaux said. “There was nothing organized about it. I was just going to walk. I didn’t even have a bucket (to sit on.)
“I was just going to sit on the ground against an oak tree. It was random.”
Simoneaux said that, in hindsight, he thinks it was the deer’s inability to spot him that aided the kill.
“I had the west to my back,” he said. “It was 6 p.m., and the sun was straight in his eyes when he was looking toward me. I don’t think he ever saw me. He probably thought I was a silhouette or maybe another deer.”
Further backing up his theory is that when he reached the 12-point buck, there was a large 10-point standing only a matter of yards from him.
“When I grabbed (the 12-point) by the horns, the 10-point was next to me,” Simoneaux said. “He never ran. He just trotted off. I guess he felt safe because he never did come into (the clearing.) He was just inside the woods.”
Simoneaux said it was one of the more odd hunting experiences he’s had, but he won’t be asking any questions when the 12-point is hanging on his living room wall.
“After I made the shot, I went to my back,” he said. “I must have laid there for three minutes. The character of his horns was just incredible.
“It’s too good to be true. But, when it’s your time, it’s your time.”
Click here to read about other big bucks killed this season.
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