Robbins’ buck green scores 163 inches Pope and Young
Almost two weeks after arrowing a thick-racked 9-pointer on an old river bottom in Concordia Parish, Scott Robbins is still showing off photos of the buck like the proud father of a newborn child.
“I’m still on a high from shooting a deer like that. My wife is tired of seeing the pictures,” he said with a chuckle. “And my employees are the same way.
“They’re tired of me showing my clients.”
The Eunice native and LSU Veterinary School graduate lives and works in Baytown, Texas, but returns to eastern Louisiana each year to hunt on family land.
On a morning hunt Jan. 10, he and the buck of a lifetime crossed paths when the 220-pound deer got a little careless chasing a doe.
Robbins was about 15-feet up in a telescopic ladder stand overlooking a slough with a palmetto thicket at his back when he noticed a nice 8-point crossing a slough behind him.
“I grunted at him and he turned and looked at me, but didn’t seem really interested,” said Robbins, 40, who works at Animal Medical Center of Baytown. “So I got really aggressive on the grunt call.
“I grunted and grunted and grunted, and he turned and circled around me and came in about 15 yards from me.”
The 8-pointer wasn’t a shooter, so Robbins watched as that deer and a spike that had joined him made their way along a ridge, when he noticed a doe headed his way.
“We’re meat hunting also, so I got my bow ready because I was going to shoot this doe,” he said. “And as she’s coming through the palmettos, I got a glimpse of another buck.
“I couldn’t tell how many points he had, all I could see was the mass on his left beam.”
The buck was chasing the doe, who made her way ten yards from Robbins’ stand. Then, inexplicably, she abruptly changed course and headed back the way she came.
“She turns around and goes straight back into the palmettos and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, man! He’s going to follow her and go back in there, too.’”
The buck didn’t immediately chase, but stayed behind a thick wall of vines and branches where Robbins didn’t have a shot.
But to his surprise, the buck stayed his course, cleared the cover and took two steps too many out into a clearing.
“If he would have turned around and went with the doe, I’d have never got a shot at him. But he just commits and comes straight out,” Robbins said. “As soon as he cleared the brush, I started drawing and he never stopped walking. I shot him walking, but he was 8 yards away.
“It spined him and dropped him in his tracks.”
The whole shot sequence, from when he saw the buck to when he shot the arrow from his BowTech Invasion, only took about 20 seconds.
But the adrenaline rush after the big buck fell was quick and intense.
“Immediately afterward, I was shaking so bad I had to sit down because I thought I was going to fall out of my tree,” Robbins said with a grin. “I tried to text my little brother, but he couldn’t read the message I was shaking so bad. I sent him a message, and he texted back, ‘What?’
“So I just called him and said, ‘Man, I can hardly talk I’m shaking so bad.’”
One look at the buck’s massive rack and you can see what had Robbins so excited.
The 9-pointer green scored 163 inches Pope and Young, with a thick, palmated rack that carries mass all the way to the tips.
Robbins, who has arrowed some big deer in Texas, said this one was extra special since it was on family land.
“They don’t put stands out. They don’t put feeders out. You just have to go out there and hunt,” he said. “You’re hunting this deer in the woods, in his territory. He’s not coming to a feeder.”
“He’s not like any other deer you’re ever going to see.”
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.
