Cole Henry, a 22-year-old postal worker from Iota, only needed one trail cam photo of a big buck to get set up for an encounter. On Nov. 23, his plan worked to perfection when the big 9-point buck of which he had only a single photo walked out in the area where the camera was located and Henry connected with the big buck that grossed 160 inches.
“I hunt on family land in Grant Parish with my dad, my granddad and a couple of friends,” Henry said. “We hunted the week prior to Thanksgiving week and got to the property on Nov. 21. I put my ladder stand up later that day where the camera had shown where he stepped out.”
The following day, Henry hunted the stand without seeing anything. As the party had a couple more days to hunt before returning home, Henry hunted the same stand hoping the buck would show up again. The area was mostly a stand of pines with a couple of shooting lanes. He had put out a pile of corn as an enticement.
“Right about 7:30 the next morning, I was sitting in my stand when I saw movement in the pines about 100 yards from my stand. This big buck stepped out. He was not following a doe that I could see although his hocks were dark indicating he was in full rut,” Henry continued.
“I watched him walk several yards into the clearing and then he turned and started walking away from me. He finally stopped and was quartering a little toward me so I put the crosshairs on my Remington 7 mag on his shoulder and shot. At the shot, he jumped in the air and took off.”
The waiting game
Henry felt the deer would run a good distance since it took off so fast so rather than go down and check where the buck was standing when he shot, he went back to camp and reported to the other hunters what had happened.
“We decided to give him awhile so we didn’t go back to the spot for about 4 hours. I was a little worried because even though we were able to clearly see where the buck took off, there was not a drop of blood,” he said.
It had rained a couple of days before and the woods were wet so it was no problem to follow the tracks of the running buck through the woods.
“We followed the trail at least 300 yards when my grandpa up ahead yelled that he had found the buck that had died without losing a drop of blood,” Henry said. “The bullet didn’t exit and left no exit wound so it didn’t bleed. When we walked up to the deer, we were all freaking out because of the size of the rack. I knew it was a good buck but I had no idea he was that impressive.”
The buck was a main frame 8-point with a sticker point on one of the main beams giving it a total of nine points. Inside spread was an impressive 22 ½ inches, main beams were 27 and 29 inches with 7-inch brow times. Bases measured 4 ½ inches each and the buck, determined to be 4 ½ years old, tipped the scales at 195 pounds.
“We have hunted this property for years and this is not only the biggest buck I ever killed,” Henry said, “it’s the biggest buck any of us have killed here.”