Floyd Coye has hunted Sherburne Wildlife Management Area since it was created, pushing far into the swampy property with lifelong buddy Alvin Fairchild. And they’ve killed some very nice bucks – but nothing like what Coye knocked down Saturday (Feb. 13).
“I could not believe the amount of mass, the tine length it had,” Coye told LouisianaSportsman.com.
The hunt started with an early morning boat ride, and then a walk through chest-deep sloughs to reach the area the Port Allen hunter was sharing that morning with 20-year-old son Matthew.
“We set up about 80 yards apart,” Floyd Coye said.
The 53-year-old climbed into the same tree in which he had missed a huge buck a week earlier.
“I shot over him,” Coye said of the deer he missed.
That buck had sneaked up behind the hunter as he tried to grunt another big deer into range of his crossbow.
“I heard something, and I turned around,” Coye said. “I saw him but couldn’t make a move because he was looking at me.”
The deer staring at him had a massive rack atop its head. And to make matters worse, Coye had just been texting son Matthew, so he was holding a cell phone in his hand.
“I turned around and put the phone in my pocket,” he said. “My son was texting me, ‘There’s a giant (deer) behind you.’”
The buzzing of that text message rattled two knives in Coye’s pocket, so the buck was on alert.
“He walked a ridge behind me from one end to the other, and I think he was ready to bolt when I shot,” the hunter said.
The bolt zinged right over the deer’s back, and the animal disappeared back the way it came.
“For a week I was praying I missed, that it wasn’t back there dying,” Coye said.
So on Saturday, Coye was alert and hopeful as the sun crested the trees. And at 7:20 a.m., just 10 minutes earlier than the deer appeared the week before, that same deer slipped back through the water on almost the same trail.
“I had some scent bombs out, and he walked in and at 40 yards he stopped,” the hunter said. “He was quartering hard to me, and I was just saying, ‘Come one, keep coming.’ He was looking at me.”
After a brief hesitation, the deer put its head down and continued closer to the hunter.
The deer made a few more steps through the knee-deep water before stopping looking up at Coye again – and the hunter squeezed the trigger on his crossbow.
This time, he didn’t miss.
“It was the most awesome thing to see it take off,” Coye said. “I could see the blood pumping out of him.”
The deer dropped within sight of the excited hunter, and Coye knew the animal was his.
Eighty or so yards away, Matthew Coye watched the kill unfold, and was soon on the phone with his father.
“He could see everything happen,” the elder Coye said. “He could see the blood coming out of the deer.”
When Matthew reached his father’s stand site, the pair hurried to the downed buck.
“Half his horns were in the water,” Floyd Coye said. “We hugged some, kissed and hugged some more. We high-fived I don’t know how many times.
“It was just so unreal to share (the hunt) with my son.”
When the buck’s head was pulled from the water, the father-son team were stunned by the size of the 11-point.
“There was no ground shrinkage; it was only growth,” Floyd Coye said.
The brow tines were 6 inches long, but the G2s and G3s were incredible. The longest G2 was 15 inches long, with the other missing that measurement by only 2 inches. The G3s were 9 inches.
The 175-pound deer is estimated to be about 160 inches Pope and Young.
When they got to really looking at the deer’s body, Coye said they found a cut right across the back.
“I had creased him the week before,” he said. “The cut was even with the kill zone: He just ducked my arrow.”