Vollmer’s buck green scores almost 150 inches
On a cold morning in Webster Parish last month, Jason Vollmer’s 13-year-old son, Brett, opted for a spot in a heated box stand on their private lease near Shongaloo.
That choice moved the elder Vollmer to a chilly ground blind that had just been set up this season that overlooked an old logging road, where some big deer had been seen moving between a pine thicket and a cutover.
But you won’t hear the 44-year-old millwright for International Paper doing any complaining about that unheated blind now.
He made the most of that chilly morning on Nov. 9 when a huge 16-pointer stepped out of the thicket about 100 yards away.
“I was just sitting there, actually about to get my phone out and play on it,” he said. “I had been focused down that lane, and all of a sudden he just stopped down there at the end with his head way up high. It looked like he was amazed to see the ground blind, which had been there about two months.
“I said, ‘Lordy, looky there!’ All I could see was he had a decent rack. I didn’t take the time to put the scope on it and look because I knew if he turned he would run, and I’d never see him again.”
The buck was staring directly at the blind, so Vollmer readied his .308 Remington 700 and squeezed off a shot.
“I just put the crosshairs right in the center of his chest and let him have it,” he said.
The buck crumpled at the bullet’s impact, but quickly got up and headed into the cutover on the right side of the road.
“After the shot, I was concerned. I said, ‘Boy, I hope I got a good hit on him,” Vollmer said. “I was concerned about the way he took off like that.”
Vollmer did his best to wait the buck out, but after only 10 minutes, he couldn’t take it any longer and walked down to check out the site where the big deer had stood.
“There was blood everywhere, so I said, ‘Alright, I’m going to go sit back down,” he said. “So I went back to the ground blind for 45 minutes, just to give him time.”
After a long wait, Vollmer followed a pretty solid blood trail for about 100 yards straight to the big buck.
“Boy, I was just thrilled to see what I had gotten. I was just in shock,” he said. “I thanked the Lord that he went down.”
The 16-pointer green-scored 149 ⅞ inches at Simmons’ Sporting Goods in Bastrop, and featured 23-inch main beams and a 17 ¾-inch inside spread. The buck, which was in the early stages of the rut in the second week of November, weighed 195 pounds.
His son and his nephew, Brandon Vollmer, were hunting near him that Sunday morning, and their jaws dropped when they joined him to load up the big deer.
“Those eyes were big. They were in shock about like I was,” Vollmer said. “They couldn’t believe it. We had never seen one around here like that.”
His brother even thought the picture of the buck Vollmer texted him was a hoax.
“He was like, ‘What website did you get that off of?’” Vollmer said. “I had to wait until I got a picture with the buck for him to believe me.”
The big 16-pointer, which no one at the lease had ever seen before, is Vollmer’s best deer — by far.
“Bucks just haven’t always been my lucky deal, but I finally got a wall-hanger,” he said. “My wife even said she’d let me put him in the living room instead of the kids’ room.”
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.
