The author arrowed this beautiful, velvet wrapped 8-point on his Concordia Parish lease in October, 2006.
Velvet! That was all that kept running through my mind once I wrapped my hands around his antlers. It all happened so fast that I had never noticed the buck’s “summer skin” still on his antlers. Once I released the arrow, the commotion that had occurred away from the buck I had just shot grabbed my full attention. It wasn’t until I actually touched his horns that I realized I had just accomplished one of my personal goals as a bow hunter.
It is safe to assume that every whitetail hunter that makes his or her way into the deer woods each fall dreams of shooting a trophy buck. I’m no different. However, there has always been two “sub-categories” that I always wanted in the “head gear” area of a buck. I’ve always wanted to kill a deer in velvet or a buck sporting a drop tine. Little did I know that on October 2, 2006, one of those goals would become a reality.
I had just bought a new Mathews Outback bow that summer and was excited about taking it into the woods that fall to christen it. October 2nd was a Monday and I could hardly wait to finish up with work and head home to grab my gear and get settled in a Strongbuilt lock-on that I had hung just a few weeks prior. The stand was positioned about 15 yards off of a dim road that led across a bottom filled with briars and palmetto with a pin oak acorn flat to my left. I had hunted the acorn trees the previous year and kept noticing that the deer would often feed on the edge of the acorn trees and cross the road in the bottom. I had hung my lock-on so that I could shoot the road and the heavily used trail coming through the briars. The set-up was perfect and I could not wait to climb up in the stand for the evening hunt.
As I stepped out of my truck, the temperature was 93 degrees and I felt every bit of the heat as I walked to my stand and settled in. As the sweat dripped from my nose I wondered what in the hell I was doing deer hunting instead of fishing. “Welcome to Louisiana!” I mumbled. I was there for an hour when I noticed a spike slipping out of the palmetto and into the road. As he slowly made his way across, I noticed him become fully alert and stare down the road to my left. The spike quickly slipped off the way he had came and it did not take me but a second to find out why. BUCK! There was no caution in his step. In fact, he was almost in somewhat of a jog. I’m not sure if he was chasing the spike out of the area or just coming in to feed, but he was coming fast. After a quick glance, I knew he was a legal deer on our lease (8pt or better), and I remember thinking that the buck was sporting a heavy set of antlers. The buck stopped at 15 yards, and I drew back the Mathews and settled the pin behind his shoulder. With the touch of my release, the arrow had found its mark and I knew that me and my new bow had struck pay dirt. The buck ran right by the tree that I was sitting in and stopped about 10 yards behind me to my right, trying to determine just how serious a situation he had gotten into. His legs began to fail him and down he went right there in the palmettos.
As the noise from the buck “crashing” ended, I heard something to my left. It was another buck! Startled by the noise, this second buck had walked out of the road and took cover in a thicket. I watched this eight point slowly pick his antlers through the briars, trying to figure out what had just happened to his counterpart. He made his way to within 10 yards of my stand before realizing something just wasn’t right. He began sniffing the air and curling his upper lip trying to figure out that strange smell. It was only a few seconds until he felt uncomfortable and bounded through the palmetto, putting some distance between us.
