Bob Wallace, 59, is the former owner of Spotted Dog Sporting Goods in Columbia. He has since sold the business and retired to Choudrant in Lincoln Parish. After retirement, his desire was to deer hunt as much as he could on a 450-acre plot in Caldwell Parish owned by his late father and himself.
He had booked a hunt in Kansas for this season and after he was settled in on his Kansas hunt, something made him ponder if perhaps he had been premature in planning to head out of state to hunt.
“After the Kansas trip was arranged, I checked my trail cameras on my Caldwell Parish property and found photos of a really fine buck,” Wallace said. “I figured somebody might get him before I got back from Kansas.”
Before heading out to Kansas to hunt, Wallace hung a bow stand to try for the big buck with his bow. Another nice 7-point buck, not of the quality of the one that attracted his attention, had also shown up on the camera. By the time he headed out to his bow stand on the afternoon of Wednesday, Oct. 21, he was aware that the buck had not shown up on camera in that area for a while, so he was focused on having a chance at the 7-point.
“It was unusually warm for this late in October, with the temperature above 90 degrees but with the wind in my favor,” he said. “I hung on and “sweated” it out that afternoon with my plan to have a crack at the 7-point. I had stopped bowhunting since I was a kid and this would be my first chance to try for a deer with my crossbow, a Mission with Mission bolt and Rage broadhead.”
A nice surprise
About 15 minutes before dark, movement out front of his stand caught his attention. He watched four small bucks come out on his food plot, with two of them putting on a show as they began sparring. Suddenly, the bucks raced off the food plot as if something had alarmed them.
“I heard something coming through the woods and figured it was probably the 7-point, as the big one was no longer on camera in that area,” Wallace said. “About that time, I looked up to see the big buck I had on camera step out of the woods onto the food plot. My heart started racing ‘ninety to nothing’ when I realized it was the one I had hoped to have a chance at before heading to Kansas.
“The buck stepped out at 30 yards and I felt I had to shoot then or else my nerves would have been so out of control I’d have probably missed him,” Wallace chuckled.
Releasing the bolt on his crossbow, Wallace was confident he had made a good hit because of the way the deer kicked and took off into the thicket.
“I was hunting alone so I got out of my stand, left the woods and called a friend of mine, John McIlwain, to come help me track the buck,” Wallace said. “After John got there, we went to the area where the buck was standing when I shot, found blood and there was a good trail to follow. We found him piled up some 50 yards from where he was standing when the arrow hit.”
The measurements
The big-bodied buck, which weighed in at 250 pounds, sported a massive rack of 9 points with two small kickers. Its inside spread was 19 7/8 inches and its main beams were over 23 inches each, with the most remarkable statistic being the mass. At the bases, the measurement was 5 6/8 and 5 3/8 inches with the next three measurements all being over 5 inches each. Wallace took the trophy buck to his former business, Spotted Dog Sporting Goods, to have it measured. The tape read 170 6/8 inches.