Kris Melancon knew there were bucks on the 1,200-acre Concordia Parish hunting club. He’d seen a number of them on his trail cam. But nothing prepared him for the 176-inch monster he knocked down Nov. 19, the last day of the primitive-weapons season.
“I’ve got a cheap Moultrie camera, and I’ve got a lot of pictures of a lot of bucks,” the Breaux Bridge hunter said. “We have some nice bucks on the place, but no one ever saw this deer. No one ever got a photo of it.”
Click here to see another photo of the big buck.
Melancon, known on the LouisianaSportsman.com forum as “slimmel,” said he climbed into a box stand the afternoon of Nov. 19 to watch the food and see what would happen.
The property is a 10-year-old Wetlands Reserve Program tract, so it’s thickly forested with young trees.
“It’s really grown up,” Melancon said. “It’s just one big bedding area.”
About 5 p.m., a 6-point eased out of the tall grass surrounding the green patch, and the hunter watched the deer for the next 10 minutes. But he knew something was up.
“He kept looking off to the left into the grass,” Melancon said.
Finally, the deer walked about 30 feet into the grass, and another deer became visible only about 100 yards from the concealed hunter.
“I picked up my binoculars to look, and when that other deer lifted his head I saw a mass of horns,” Melancon explained. “I was, like, ‘God.’”
The club is on the Deer Management Assistance Program, and hunters must shoot bucks that have a minimum of 8 points. Melancon said there was no question this deer was a shooter.
“I’ve deer hunted all my life,” he said, pointing out that he’s spent a lot of time in Illinois watching really big bucks. “When you see a shooter, there’s no doubt.
“That’s what this deer was; he was a no-doubter.”
The hunter quickly traded the binoculars for his CVA .45-70.
“I picked up my rifle and shot him,” Melancon said. “It happened quick enough that I didn’t even get nervous.”
The deer reared “like a stallion,” ran into the plot about 30 yards, did a flip and dropped dead.
“He was dead when I squeezed the trigger; it just took 30 yards for him to find out,” Melancon said.
The hunter hurried out of the stand, wondering all the time just how big the buck would be.
“When I was walking across the food plot to go see what he was, I kept saying to myself, ‘What did I shoot? What did I shoot?’” Melancon said.
The buck was massive, with bases that measured more than 5 ½ inches around and 14 points arrayed along the main beams.
“When I saw it I was, like, ‘My God,’” Melancon said. “It’s got 7 points on both sides. The beams aren’t real long, but it’s got a lot of mass.”
The longest tine on the 225-pound buck’s rack measured 10 1/8 inches.
Simmons Sporting Goods roughed the deer out at 178 3/8 inches Boone & Crockett.
“I never would have dreamed of seeing a buck like this in Louisiana, much less being able to harvest one,” Melancon wrote on his Deer of the Year contest entry. “Unbelievable!”
