On the afternoon of Jan. 2, 16-year-old Kennedy Collins climbed into his box stand with his girlfriend by his side. With several cull bucks on the property, the plan was for her to down one, which would be her first buck.
“I explained to her that she could shoot any of the cull bucks that might show up,” Collins said, “but if the big one I had been hunting hard should happen to appear, he was mine.”
Collins is a 10th grade student at Tallulah Academy and he hunts on his father’s wheat farm in Madison Parish.
“I have been running cameras for a couple of years when this buck first showed up,” he said. “However, a friend had the buck on camera this past summer on the area he hunts, which is six miles away from our farm. I didn’t feel too good about my chance at seeing him until he showed up on my camera this past November.”
There was a small patch of woods in the Wetland Reserve Program (WRP) at the far end of the wheat field and the buck had shown up in this area on the morning of Jan. 2.
“The buck was down there at 5:30 that morning, but duck hunters had moved in to hunt there and they ran him out, so I knew it would do no good to hunt that area,” Collins said. “That’s the reason I decided to hunt the edge of the wheat field that is adjacent to a plot of big thick woods.”
The big buck appears
Getting into his stand around 3 p.m., with his girlfriend by his side, the hunt was on. About 4:30 p.m., four or five small bucks were in the wheat field and were in and out of the woods when a bigger buck stepped out at 185 yards.
“I could tell it was the big one I had on camera and I got ready to take him,” Collins said. “I shoot a .300 Blackout and I got on him and took the shot. When I shot he took off, and although I could tell I had hit him, I was afraid I had made a bad shot.”
Collins called his dad and reported what had happened. His dad told him to go look where the buck was standing, but don’t follow his trail more than 50 yards. He was worried his son would jump the buck and make the retrieval more difficult.
“When I got to about 50 yards from where he was standing, I could see the buck piled up just down the trail,” Collins said.
The buck was a main frame 8-point with two small kickers. It weighed 250 pounds and was determined to be 5 ½ years old. The inside spread was 19 inches. The rack was measured at 155 4/8 inches.
“My girlfriend was happy for me, but she told me I’d have to take her back hunting soon so she could get the buck I had promised her,” Collins said. “I told her she could count on it.”
