Sometimes plans you have don’t materialize, but you are rewarded by something far better. That’s what happened to 36-year-old Sterlington resident Casey Barton on Nov. 16.
Barton, a Ouachita Parish Fire Department Captain and paramedic, was hunting family property in Richland Parish with his 11-year-old son, Mason.
“We had been dropped off at a spot where we planned to hunt and got settled into a box stand,” Barton said. “Several of us were hunting on the property, including my wife who was hunting with her dad, Dan Chason, and we were sharing texts as to what we were seeing, and nobody was seeing anything. So I told Mason that we would walk back to where we had been dropped off to see if we might see a hog for him to shoot.”
Near where Barton and Mason had been dropped off was a big Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) field connected to a food plot. Barton thought there could be some feral hogs in there that might venture out onto the plot for Mason.
“We were standing there and I was using my binoculars to scan the area, when suddenly this big buck we had never seen just stood up in the CRP,” Barton said.
Caught off guard
There was a bit of a problem because his rifle was a good 10 steps behind him where he had laid it with his hunting pack. He was looking at a monster buck without immediate access to his rifle.
“We have a rule on our club where bucks have to score at least 130 inches, so I called Dan, my father-in-law, to tell him what I was looking at,” Barton said. “I could count nine points on the rack and told Dan that the rack was a good bit north of 130 so he agreed I should take it.”
Walking back to get his Remington .270, he moved carefully to a nearby tree to use as a rest. The buck was 120 yards away and had started to walk out of the CRP onto the clearing.
“The buck was quartering to me just a bit so I put the crosshairs on his shoulder and squeezed off a shot,” Barton said. “The buck dropped there on the spot. I called Dan and told him I had dropped him and they started coming my way. In the meantime, I walked down to the fallen buck and the antlers seemed to grow the closer I got to him.”
A monster buck
The buck was taken to Simmons Sporting Goods in Bastrop to be entered in that store’s big buck contest. The 11-point rack measured 171 7/8 inches. The inside spread was 15 5/8 inches and main beams were 25 and 26 inches with bases over 5 inches. The buck weighed 231 pounds and was judged to be 6 ½ years old.
“The best part of it was I had no plans to shoot a buck that day,” Barton said. “I was more interested in Mason getting to shoot a hog. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time when this buck we had never seen just stepped out and I was able to drop him.”
Incidentally, Mason had killed a big 5-point buck on the previous Friday and his deer is leading that category at Simmons.
