By: Bud Alexis
As I walked past a huge oak tree I came face to face with this monster. We were about five feet apart staring eyeball to eyeball.
We lived in a little town close to the Mississippi River, with lots of soybean fields, so the deer eat pretty good. It is not uncommon for deer to weigh over three hundred pounds around here.
It was doe day in Louisiana, which meant that we could kill either sex. The morning was rather chilly, and there was a pretty heavy fog drifting over most of the fields. My friend, my son, and I were hunting a field along the levee bordering the river. As we walked along the edge of the field on our way to a particular area, there appeared several deer, barely visible, walking one behind the other parallel to us. We could hardly make out the targets, but knew that it was deer. We all chose a deer to shoot and opened fire. We decided to wait for the fog to burn off before we would attempt to find the deer. We could only find one blood trail, so we began our adventure.
The trail led into a slew that ran for better than a quarter mile. Since the blood trail led into the slew, I volunteered to go in while they would follow on either side. Amazingly enough the deer traveled in the slew, about waist deep water, and left a blood trail going over logs, grass and other things in the water. I thought that was neat to track a deer through the water. Almost to the end of the slew, the deer jumped up and headed across the field, which was almost a half mile to the woods. It was a huge deer. I kept my eye on the area that he went through a barbed wire fence, and into the woods. Through hand signals that I gave, my son found the place the deer went into the woods.
The blood trail was almost none existent. I felt like an Indian, as I would crawl on hands and knees, for what seemed like miles. After about four hours, and only God knew where we were in the woods, we finally jumped up the buck as he was bedded down in a fallen tree top. After a few more shots, here we went again. We would jump him up occasionally out of fallen tree tops, but noticed that he would lie down sooner and sooner.
As we came to a small draw in the woods, I chose to go into the draw, while my friend and son walked up on the bank. As I walked past a huge oak tree I came face to face with this monster. We were about five feet apart staring eyeball to eyeball. It was a really startling experience at that moment. I was afraid to make any sudden moves and my rifle was pointed in the wrong direction. I could see my son to my left and with a loud whisper told him to shoot the deer. Just as he raised his gun to shoot, the deer bolted, ran to end of the draw, then up and out of sight.
We decided to sit and wait another thirty minutes, hoping the deer would die. We knew he had several bullet holes in him. I told them to wait there and I would go to the end of the draw and at least see what direction he went. As I got to the top of the embankment I saw the deer bedded down in another fallen tree top. I decided to try again with another shot. I braced on a tree and thought I made a pretty good shot. The deer bolted again, but got hung up in the branches. I ran over to the deer, and to this day can’t figure out how the next event happened. I found myself holding onto the deer and yelling for help. My friend and son appeared almost immediately and each grabbed a hind leg. The deer started dragging all three of us. I finally finished the deer with a knife, being careful not to mess up the, because I intended to get this one mounted. The buck finally expired. All that took six hours, and the deer weighed 278 pounds. Yes, I do have the mount hanging on the wall.
[The deer trophy is now hanging at my home, the son.]
