A buck Amanda Weaver had on camera with which she actually had a couple of close encounters, had earned a special name. She called him Prince Charming and on the morning of Nov. 25, she finally got to claim her special fellow.
Weaver, who lives in Keithville, hunts on a 1000 acre hunting club near Greenwood in Caddo Parish. The mother of three youngsters, she is currently a stay-at-home mom.
“I started getting the buck on my trail camera in October with only nighttime photos; he had not shown up in daylight,” Weaver said.
During archery season, Weaver was on her stand and was playing with a grunt call when the buck stepped out, but because the shot would have been questionable, she held off and watched him walk away.
“A week before I got him, I was headed to my stand one morning,” Weaver said. “When I got to the gate near my stand, there he stood. But before I could get my rifle, he walked away. I was determined to win this game with him.”
Another chance
On Friday, Nov. 25, Weaver set out for her stand with the idea of getting there early. Climbing into her box stand around 5:30, she settled down to wait for daylight.
“I had been seeing a couple of little yearling bucks just about every time I was on my stand, and I felt I could at least get a chance to watch these two little guys,” she said. “They never showed, so I pulled out my grunt call and decided to use it about every half hour.
“I grunted on the call at 7:00, at 7:30 and again at 8:00. Not having any response, I leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes for a few seconds. When I opened my eyes, there he stood in a puddle of rain water about 75 yards away. When I sat upright in my chair, I must have made some noise because the buck spooked and began walking away.”
Quickly shouldering her .270 Remington bolt action, she got the crosshairs of her scope on him, squeezed the trigger and saw the deer jump and take off with his tail up.
“That concerned me because when you hit a deer the tail usually drops down, so I started wondering if maybe I had missed,” she said. “I called my boyfriend and told him what had happened and that I had either shot the big 12 or an 8-point with some of the same antler characteristics.”
Walking down to where the deer was walking when she shot, she could find no evidence because of the water where the buck was standing. She assumed she must have missed, but she stepped into the woods the direction the deer had run and found him piled up; he had run only about 10 yards after the shot.
First place
The buck carried an almost perfectly symmetrical 12-point rack with an inside spread of 16 7/8 inches. He weighed 172 pounds and was determined to be 6 ½ years old. Taking the buck to Simmons Sporting Goods in Bastrop to be entered in that store’s Big Buck contest, the rack measured 166 1/8 inches, first place in the Women’s Division.
“I had to really work at it,” Weaver said, “but I finally got my ‘Prince Charming.’”