Chris Hart of Ruston admits that, better than a week after his best day as a deer hunter, he’s still having a hard time believing it.
“I’m still walking on a cloud,” said Hart, who on Oct. 27 killed the biggest buck of his life, a Union Parish monster with a huge 5×5 main frame and two sticker points that grossed 168 ⅝ inches. “Bucks like that don’t happen up here very often.”
Hart dropped the big buck on the spot on the fourth day of primitive weapons season with a single shot from his .350 legend at 85 yards – ending a 3-year relationship with the deer.
“I’ve got a little history with this deer,” said Hart, one of 26 members of a hunting club that has 5,000 acres under lease, upstream from Lake D’Arbonne. “The year before last, I saw him a little bit. He was a slick 10. He was with another big buck coming into the stand, a big 8-pointer. I shot the 8, but I never saw him again, and I didn’t get a (trail cam) pic of him last year. Maybe one or two guys in the club had one.
“Right before bow season, I got him on a camera at another stand, then the next morning at 8:30, I got him on camera at my stand – a mile-and-a-half away. He went that far overnight.
“The month of October, he was coming in every night, daylighting a little bit in the morning. He would get there about 4:30 and stay until 7:30. In the afternoon, he was coming in 10 or 15 minutes after dark.”
Waiting on the wind
Hart, a 41-year-old business owner, had one particular encounter. The second week of archery season, the big buck arrived late one afternoon with another buck, which Hart estimated was a 135-inch 8-pointer. He had a good shot at that deer, but not the bigger one.
“It was all I could do not to shoot him,” he said. “But if I had shot that deer, I would have screwed myself out of the big buck.”
Hart never tried to hunt the big buck in the morning, because so many deer were using the area before daylight, and he didn’t want to spook them and end his chances. Most evenings, he said, “I couldn’t catch a good wind.”
In mid-October, Hart figured he had no chance of killing the buck with a bow. A week before primitive weapons season, he set up a ground blind about 80 to 100 yards behind his bow stand.
He hunted every afternoon the first four days of primitive weapons season. The first day, the wind was blowing from the wrong direction. That evening, however, the buck showed up on camera at his ground blind at 6:30 p.m. – the first time he’d ever daylighted in the afternoon. Back in his ground blind the next day, the buck showed up 15 minutes after he left at dark, and the third day, he showed up 7 or 8 minutes after Hart vacated the area.
A window of opportunity
Finally, on Oct. 27, the buck came out 10 or 15 minutes before the end of legal shooting time, but with five or six does and a 6-pointer, whose presence blocked Hart from getting a clean shot. After five minutes, the does went on alert and ran into the woods to his left, with the two bucks in tow.
“I was thinking, ‘I blew it.’” Hart admitted. “But I heard something, and he stepped back out, broadside. I only had a small lane to shoot through, but I shot him right through the shoulder, and he dropped on the spot.”
The buck weighed 183 pounds, and Hart took him to Simmons Sporting Goods in Bastrop, where Buckmasters scorer Greg Hicks put a tape on him and came up with 168 ⅝, with a 17-inch spread, 5-inch bases, main beams pushing 25 inches, two tines approaching 12 inches and two more flirting with 11.
