Hawthorne’s Rifle Point buck green scores 184 7/8 inches Boone and Crockett
Next to all of the incredible, amazing, awe-inspiring technological things an iPad is capable of doing, you can now officially add deer-stand-window-opener to the list.
When a 180-class 12-point bounded out into the food plot he was watching at Rifle Point in Concordia Parish last month, Ivan Hawthorne couldn’t get the window in the box stand to lock in the open position.
“I was desperate,” said Hawthorne, 49, of Winnsboro. “I didn’t care if it busted the iPad.
“I was ready to get that window locked open before that big buck left the plot.”
So he grabbed the device that he had brought along to entertain his 5-year-old grandson, wedged the window open and focused on the big buck about 270 yards from his box stand.
“I had clicked the gun off safety and I was getting ready to shoot,” said Hawthorne, the national marketing director for Buck Bomb deer hunting attractant. “Then I jerked my head out of the scope and it hit me that the deer was further than 200 yards.”
He readjusted, intentionally aimed about 6 inches high as the big buck quartered away, then fired his .338. The deer crumpled where he stood.
“The bullet dropped almost to perfection,” Hawthorne said. “If I had shot the first time, I would have probably undershot the deer.”
Hawthorne and his grandson, Carson, had arrived at the box stand overlooking a turnip field at Rifle Point, about five miles north of Vidalia, around 2:45 p.m. on Dec. 23.
Before heading into the stand, Hawthorne drove along the western edge of the food plot in his electric Polaris Ranger and put out a lines of Ground Pound, a grain-based scented deer attractant.
Shortly after they got into the stand, four deer, including a big 8-point, were making their way across the turnip field towards the grain.
“I’m looking at this 8-point studying him with binoculars when the big boy bounced right into the food plot from the northwest corner,” Hawthorne said.
The ‘big boy’ turned out to be a massive 12-pointer that green scored 184 7/8 inches Boone and Crockett, with a 22 3/8-inch inside spread and bases 4 6/8 inches in diameter.
“I knew he was at least a 170-inch deer,” Hawthorne said, describing his thoughts before taking the shot. “I’m not one to stare at a rack until later. I did look at it, but when I saw all that bone and those stickers, I put the binoculars down and started staring at the point I wanted to go into with the bullet.
“Because big antlers can really shake you.“
The opportunity to take a 180-class buck with Carson in the stand made it that much more special, he said.
“That just made it the double hunt of a lifetime having my grandson with me,” Hawthorne said. “Carson was beside himself with excitement. He ran across the food patch and jumped on the deer like a steer and grabbed the horns.
“We had a moment there. It was amazing.”
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.
