Time spent in stand as a toddler winds up producing 160-class buck
As a toddler, Daisy Verdin was introduced to hunting when she accompanied her mom to their deer stand in north Claiborne Parish.
“I’d take her with me, and she had her own little chair she sat in,” her mom, Mandy, said. “She’d take her colors and coloring book and today, there is some of her ‘art’ on the walls of my stand from when she went with me.”
That early introduction to sitting in a deer stand and observing what went on out in the woods apparently had a far-reaching effect on the youngster, because on Sunday afternoon, Nov. 24, the 11-year-old sixth grader at Summerfield High School performed like a seasoned hunter when she calmly downed an impressive 11-point buck that scored 161 1/8 inches Boone and Crockett.
“Daisy started hunting for real with my husband and me last season when she was 10, and she managed to take two deer a year ago,” Mandy said.
This season started off like gangbusters for the youngster, as she has already taken two does, a spike and a 6-point buck before she got her crack at the big one.
“Daisy and I got in the stand a little late that afternoon, probably around 4:30, and hadn’t been there long before a doe and yearling came out on the clearing where we had a feeder. Daisy shoots a Browning .243, got the scope on them practicing, because she had no intention of shooting one of them,” Mandy said.
The deer were there about 10 minutes and just before dark, some other deer began making their way to the feeder.
“We were watching them when Daisy whispered, ‘Mom, there’s a really big buck.’ The buck approached the doe and yearling and chased them back into the woods, where he followed,” she said. “I figured the show was over for that day.”
But seconds later, a deer came walking back out and they recognized it as the big buck Daisy was after.
“The deer was facing us and she was having trouble deciding whether to take such a risky shot. The buck started to leave, I yelled and it stopped broadside looking our direction. Daisy fired and the buck dropped in his tracks,” she said.
The buck was indeed impressive, tipping the scales at 181 pounds. The rack sported 11 scoreable points with two stickers.
The following day, they took the deer to Simmons Sporting Goods in Bastrop to be entered in the store’s Big Buck Contest. Putting the tape on the buck, scorers at Simmons measured an inside spread of 16 7/8 inches, main beams over 22 inches each, bases at 4 4/8 inches while the G-3 stretched the tape to 12 3/8 inches, with a green score of 161 1/8. At this writing, Daisy’s buck leads the youth division in the store’s contest.
Mandy’s husband, Chad, also hunts, but apparently he doesn’t get too spend too much time in the stand.
“He’s only killed one this year,” Mandy said with a laugh. “Daisy and I are keeping him too busy cleaning our deer for him to do much hunting.”
Don’t forget to enter photos of your bucks in the Nikon Big Buck Photo Contest to be eligible for monthly giveaways and the random drawing for Nikon Monarch binoculars at the end of the contest.
Read other stories about big bucks killed this season by clicking here.
