I was hunting Nov. 23, 2023 accompanied by my father-in-law and my wife. We got all our equipment together such as guns, bullets, flashlights etc., then we headed out from our home in Deville to Colfax, where we lease 2,800 acres in Grant Parish. We were running a little behind with the time already at 3:30 p.m. and all of us needed to be in our stands by 4:00.
As I was walking down my lane, I grabbed a bottle of Cuzz’s Cooter Juice, the purple bottle that is. As I started spraying it, I kept going for about 150 yards down my lane with the north wind at around 5 miles an hour. Around 4:20, a decent 8-point came out and I put my gun out the window. I kept looking at him through the scope but never took my safety off. I grabbed my grunt call, gave a couple grunts, the buck looked back behind him and eased off in the woods. At that moment I believed there had to be a bigger buck in the vicinity.
After 25 minutes, I looked down my right lane, which goes back towards a lake bottom, and I saw antlers come out of the brush. There was my trophy deer just 130 yards away from me.
I immediately grabbed my Model 7400 30-06 and got the deer in the scope. I’ve been hunting this deer for about four months and knew it was him. I took a deep breath, put the crosshairs in the middle of the body and squeezed the trigger. The buck ran and I didn’t think he was hit. I waited about 15 minutes to get out of my stand while I still had some daylight to go look for signs of a successful hit. I walked to where I thought he had stepped out, where I found a track where it looked like he had run off, but I could not find any blood. I started to think of what my dad always told me when I was young. When you think you are at the location you believe the deer walked into your lane and you see no signs of anything, step forward about 15 to 50 yards past where you think the deer walked into your lane.
I walked about 25 yards forward after not seeing anything but the track and found a chunk of what I believed was lung in the shooting lane, I placed my hat down beside the chunk of lungs and I let out a big shout of excitement and relief. I had a couple of friends, my father-in-law, my dad, and my uncle all met up beside my stand and we went to look for any further signs.
They asked me what I shot and I didn’t tell them which deer it was because it was on the bucket list of everybody around. We waited and talked for around 30 minutes. We started walking down my lane to where my hat was placed alongside the chunk of lung and we started looking. We found a little speck here and a little speck there. It was this way for about 25 yards and the specks started getting closer together and a larger amount in each until we found the giant piled up 75 yards from where I shot him.
There he was, a massive 11-point. He scored 145 inches and it was definitely one hunt that I’ll never forget because I got one of my target bucks.
– Joshua Pryor
