Upon returning to the scene at 3:00 that afternoon and not finding much blood, Courville’s doubts began to grow. The 9 person search party he’d brought along with him fanned out, scouring the ridge in the direction the buck ran. Soon thereafter, Courville was delighted to hear whooping and hollering from one of the search party members about 150 yards away. “I knew one of them had found my buck,” he recalled.

With a severed femoral artery, this buck only went 150 yards.

Dragging a deer out is tough work in Kisatchie's hills.

The arrow passed through in front of the buck’s right hind quarter, exiting out of the rear of his left hind quarter, clipping the femoral artery in the process; he bled internally, for back-trailing his path revealed only a few drops of blood. The deer was far beyond anyone’s expectations, and after a bunch of high fives and 15 minutes of celebratory congratulations, the chore began of dragging the buck 1 mile back to the truck over some of Louisiana’s most inhospitable terrain.

Although Courville has witnessed several larger bucks escape his arrow’s wrath on Louisiana’s public lands, this is his best buck harvested to date, and is well deserved for such a dedicated and experienced woodsman.  To accomplish such a feat is the dream of every bowhunter, and to do it on public land takes it to the next level. Our congratulations go out to him and his friends who shared in the joy of this successful endeavor.

Sharing the recovery of a deer like this with your closest friends is hard to top.