It was a day of off and on rain in Beauregard Parish on Nov. 9, and the rain played a big role in Carolyn Alexander, a nurse anesthetist who lives in Lafayette, finding her target buck in the crosshairs of her scope.
“We were at our camp on our 500 acre property in Beauregard and my husband, Alec, and I had planned to hunt that Saturday morning,” Alexander said. “However, it was pouring rain, so instead of hunting we hung around the camp and watched some football. At halftime of the game, the rain had let up so we decided to go for a ride in our side-by-side on the property.”
Driving slowly down a dirt road around 12:30 p.m., there stood a big buck in the road just ahead of them. The buck paused long enough for them to know it was the one they had on camera so the couple made an immediate change in plans. They decided they needed to be on their stands.
“We hurried back to camp, got our gear, and Alec wanted me to hunt the stand that was nearer where we had seen the buck while he got in another stand,” she said. “I climbed into my box stand around 1:00 p.m. and it started softly raining again.”
The waiting game
Alexander’s stand sits in a mixture of pines and hardwoods with a lane in front, one that had been opened by the fire department when a wildfire swept through the area earlier. A creek crosses the lane she was watching and 300 yards down the lane is a ladder stand they use for bow hunting.
“I started watching does on the lane and I thought about maybe taking a doe, but my husband texted me telling me not to forget the big buck we had seen in the area an hour earlier, so I held off and watched the does hoping the buck would come out,” she said.
It was getting late, but just before 5:00 p.m. she saw the back end of a big deer. He turned around and started walking toward her.
“I felt it was too far for me to shoot so I decided to hold off, but then watched him disappear into the woods,” she said. “I was mad at myself for passing up what I figured was my only chance at him.”
A few minutes later the buck just popped out of the woods at 100 yards and started walking away. Alexander made a noise that stopped him, he turned around giving her a broadside shot. She hit the trigger of her Remington 6mm and the buck dropped on the spot.
“I couldn’t let myself look at his antlers because I was already nervous enough,” she said. “I was afraid if I looked at that rack it would really shake me up.”
An impressive buck
It was starting to getting dark as she texted her husband and they drove up on the side-by-side. She was telling him she wasn’t sure if it was the big one, but the closer they got to the fallen buck the rack just seemed to have gotten bigger and bigger.
The buck was impressive indeed. It was sporting a rack of 17 points, an inside spread of 19 inches, 26-inch main beams and 4 ½-inch bases. He only weighed 160 pounds and was 6 ½ years old. The rack was rough scored at an even 171 inches.
Interestingly, the buck Klint White got in Beauregard Parish the day before had features on its rack that almost exactly matched those of Alexander’s deer and was the same age, lending to the likelihood these two bucks were of the same bloodline, brothers perhaps.
