Green’s buck tops 160 inches Boone and Crockett
Ali Green had a pretty rough day last Tuesday, but she probably wouldn’t trade it for the world now.
The 17-year-old senior guard for the Riverfield Academy Lady Raiders got hit and busted her lip in basketball practice that morning, then proceeded to get smacked in the face twice that afternoon by the scope on her .257 Weatherby.
She was taking hits like an MMA fighter all day, but she came out on top when she downed a 160-class 10-point buck near Waverly in Madison Parish late that afternoon.
“I had busted my lip and I was in a really bad mood, but my dad talked me into going,” she said.
Green didn’t get to the elevated box stand overlooking patches of standing corn alongside wheat until around 3:30, and almost missed seeing the big buck altogether because she was focused on her phone, which was helping her pass the time on a cold afternoon with a broken heater.
“I was playing Candy Crush,” she said with a laugh. “I wasn’t even paying attention.”
Shortly after 5, the buck came out of a stand of CRP to Green’s right.
“I looked up and horns was all I saw,” she said. “My windows weren’t opened and my gun wasn’t loaded, nothing,” she said. “So I sat my phone down, and I was like, ‘Okay, I got to shoot this deer. I don’t know how big it is, but it looks really big.’”
The buck was wary of the stand – and only about 50 yards away – but she caught a break when a doe appeared in the lane to her right and the big deer started moving in that direction.
“I opened the window a little bit and put my gun up a little bit and he was walking away from me, so I had to watch him for a little while,” said Green, who plans to enroll at UL-Monroe this fall and major in pharmacy. “He was eating and looking at the doe, eating and looking at the doe.
“I knew if I didn’t shoot him right then he was going to run away,” she said. “But I watched him through the scope for about four or five steps before I thought I had a good enough shot. My heart was racing really fast.
“He got a little sideways and I shot, and the scope hit me in the face.”
The deer dropped instantly, and Ali called her father, Darren, to find out what to do next.
“I called Dad and I told him I shot something and he’s down and not moving,” she said. “Then I looked up and he was trying to pick his head up, and all I could see was horns going up and down.
“So I said, ‘Okay, he’s still moving.’ Daddy was like, ‘Okay, shoot him again and call me back.’ So I shot him again in the back, and the scope hit me in the face – again.
“But he didn’t move after that.”
The big buck, estimated to be at least 6 1/2 years old, green-scored 161 5/8 inches Boone and Crockett. A mainframe 8, the deer has an almost palmated G2 on its right side with two long kickers, and had a 19 7/8-inch inside spread.
Her father said it wasn’t Ali’s first encounter with the big buck, which has been seen on the property for years.
“She let him go three or four years ago when he was in the 130s, and she got the opportunity to redeem herself,” Darren said. “And it paid off.”
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.
