Miller’s buck green scores 157 inches B&C
A problem with one of his feeders last week turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Josh Miller, who took down the buck of a lifetime on his 4,300-acre lease near Sugartown on the Beauregard – Allen Parish line.
He had walked out to work on the feeder late in the morning on Oct. 27, and found a corn cob stuck in the spin plate. He removed it and got the feeder working again, then noticed what he had brought along for the repair job.
“I just happened to have my hunting bag with me, and I looked down and saw a can of Buck Bomb in there,” said Miller, 34, of Church Point. “So on my way back walking from the feeder, I hit that Buck Bomb on some of the clear cut.”
That was about 11:30 in the morning, and Miller climbed back into his box stand about 4 p.m. for an afternoon hunt where he honestly wasn’t expecting a lot of action.
“I didn’t really think it was going to be good with the full moon,” he said. “Everybody else went midday, but I just had to have that afternoon hunt.”
There wasn’t much going on until a hunter about 480 yards from him fired at a hog around 6:30 p.m.. The shot directed Miller’s attention to one of his three shooting lanes closest to a creek bottom and a food plot.
“Two minutes after that shot, I saw movement in the brush. That’s when his antlers came out,” he said. “So I put my rifle out the window before he had even stepped out in the lane.
“I couldn’t even see his head. When he took his first step, he stopped and looked straight at the blind, buy my rifle was already on his front shoulder.”
Miller is unsure if the Buck Bomb was just a coincidence, but he wasn’t expecting to see anything from that side of his lane. From 53 yards, his .270 found its mark and caught both of the buck’s lungs.
“When I hit him, he roared up about 3 or 4 feet, then lost his footing and went head over heels 15 yards in the clear cut,” Miller said. “I could see him fall from my stand.”
The buck was one that three hunters on the lease had gotten pictures of starting in September, but nobody had ever seen during the day.
“I don’t know what happened with this deer, or where he came from,” he said. “The pictures I had were from 3 o’clock in the morning.”
The buck was a 15-pointer which green-scored 157 inches, with main beams 20 ½ inches long, an inside spread of 13 ¾ inches and circumferences at the bases of 4 ¾ inches. The deer weighed 180 pounds, and was aged at 4 ½ years old.
“I didn’t have time to be nervous. When his head stuck out, it all happened so fast,” Miller said. “My gun was already out the window, so I just squeezed off.
“After I fired it hit me, that I had just shot an amazing buck.”
The deer is the lease’s biggest ever, surpassing an 11-pointer killed 12 years ago, Miller said.
“I’ve been on this lease for 10 years, and this is by far the best buck I’ve ever killed,” he said. “This is the biggest buck I’ve killed in my life.”
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 optics at the end of the contest.
Read other stories about big bucks killed this season by clicking here.
