The hunt wasn’t going according to plan. Patrick Kelleher hit Giles Island on Dec. 6 with visions of big bucks running everywhere, but his day and a half of hunting didn’t live up to his dreams. And then he climbed into a stand on Dec. 8, and knew the ballgame had changed.
Within 30 minutes of jacking up over a funnel, Kelleher was watching a massive 8-point run away leaving a massive blood trail. That buck eventually taped out in the upper 130s Pope & Young, missing the 140 mark by only a couple of inches.
“We saw a few deer that Monday afternoon, including a 150-inch 10-point, but we had a strike-out day (the next day) where we might have seen one doe,” the LouisianaSportsman.com columnist said. “When we got out there Wednesday (Dec. 8), it was like flipping a light switch.”
Kelleher and his Giles Island guide actually slept in a bit late, waiting until the sun was up before heading to an area on the edge of a swamp bordering the Mississippi River. Their selected stand site was overlooking a bunch of tree tops in an upland area where the topography drops to the swamp.
“I didn’t get in the stand until almost 7 a.m.,” Kelleher explained. “We wanted to be sure we could find trails we wanted, and we weren’t sure which tree would be best.
“We were hunting funnels that the deer had to use in the tree tops.”
Almost as soon as they got set up, the parade started.
“We saw four rack deer, a spike and some does,” Kelleher said.
The veteran hunter said he believed the deer were staying in the swamp, where the U.S. Corps of Engineers was digging a big bar pit as part of a road project.
“The bucks were coming out of that swamp with muddy legs,” he said.
It was like the bucks finally had decided it was time to get started on courting activity, moving out of the soggy portion of the island to more agreeable ground.
And then Kelleher spotted a huge set of antlers coming out of the swamp.
“He was just walking along,” he said. “We rattled, and he turned and started coming right on in.”
The buck was forced to use a trail not 15 yards from Kelleher’s elevated stand position, and the excited hunter drew his bow as it closed the distance.
There was only one problem: The buck offered a view that was a hard quartering-to shot.
“He was quartering to me more than I like, but I had to take the shot because the way he was turning he was about to be gone,” Kelleher said.
He loosed the arrow, which buried perfectly, traveling through the animal and exiting through the groin.
Kelleher was pumped, even though he lost sight of the wounded deer after about 50 yards.
“We felt certain I had hammered him,” he said.
So after only 15 minutes, Kelleher and his guide (who videoed the entire hunt) climbed down and headed to track the deer.
“We went about 150 yards, and he jumped up and hauled boogie,” Kelleher said. “He didn’t look very hurt, but he was bleeding like a stuck pig.”
Even with the amount of blood flowing from the animal, Kelleher was worried. So the pair headed back to the camp to wait.
“He ran another 100 yards and stopped,” Kelleher said. “But we didn’t want to push him.”
They waited until 2 p.m. before returning, and the deer was dead as a post.
“He was stiff,” Kelleher said. “He had been dead for a while.”
The buck’s rack was just massive. Main beams stretched 23 inches each and enclosed 18 inches of air. Arrayed along those thick beams were tines that rose no less than 10 inches, with a couple that touched the 11-inch mark.
“It had 17 inches of mass on each side,” Kelleher said.
Click here to see other bucks killed this season and enter your own bucks into the Nikon Deer of the Year contest. But remember that you must be a registered user of the site to be eligible for the prizes.
