November 3, 2009 will be a day that Kade Mitchell will never forget. Mitchell, an oilfield worker, had just come home from work the day prior when he decided to go check the trail camera at one of his stands. He and several family members lease around 1200 acres close to Leesville, Louisiana near Mitchell’s Vernon Parish home. “I got my wife and kids to go with me to check the camera,” he recalled. “I had my wife’s hand held camera with us and I checked the SD card right there at the stand. When his picture showed up I said, ‘Well, there’s the Daddy!’”  What initially appeared to be a 12-point on the small camera screen turned out to be a 14-point once enlarged on Mitchell’s computer back home.  ”In 25 years of hunting, I’ve been fortunate to take some nice deer, but nothing ever compared to this buck,” he reiterated.

Having a buck of the caliber show up on a trail-cam is cause for rejoice, but actually harvesting it the very next day brings it to a whole different level.

Mitchell set out the next morning to put up his climbing stand close to a creek bottom in the vicinity of where the buck’s photos were snapped. The hunter was setup in an open creek bottom that came to a head in some thick brush. He’d seen several deer during bow season in the area, and was confident in the spot. It formed a natural funnel for deer passing through the creek bottom, oftentimes avoiding the large, fresh clear-cut sprawling the land behind Mitchell’s stand. “At 6:50 AM, I just happened to look over my shoulder and there he was, walking far out there across the clear-cut at a steady pace—head up,” the elated hunter recounted.  ”He didn’t seem to be chasing any does, and I tried to get him to stop but he just kept right on going.”  Knowing that bucks of this caliber may only slip up once like this in a season—more likely a lifetime—Mitchell decided to take the shot at 215 yards with his 300 Winn Short Mag.

At that distance it was tough to see if the shot found its mark, so Mitchell waited 15 minutes before climbing down to go see if the bullet flew true. “I got up to where I knew I had shot him and there was nothing—I was sick,” he stated. With no blood to follow, Mitchell continued trailing the buck by way of his heavy tracks. “The Lord must have been with me that day, because after cold-trailing for 150 yards I finally found blood—only about the size of a pencil head—but at least I knew he was hit,” he recalled.

Mitchell called his Dad for help and also to pick up his buddy’s feist dog, Sparky, so that he could do the blood trailing. With the help of the dog, they followed blood the edge of a large thicket. “I knew he’d probably be in there and I didn’t want to take any chances,” the hunter said, “so I called my wife and asked her to bring me my shotgun with some buckshot.” The trailing continued into the thicket, where they soon heard the buck jump up not 20 yards from where they were standing. As the buck struck out across a pasture, Mitchell fired one round of buckshot, striking the deer at nearly 80 yards as it proceeded into another thicket across the field. Knowing the buck was hit twice and still on his feet, the pair decided to back out in an effort to salvage any chance they had at finding the buck.

Kade Mitchell and feist "Sparkey" pose with the Vernon Parish giant taken on November 3.

After an agonizing two hour wait, they resumed the search with the help of a friend and an additional dog. When they arrived at the thicket where the buck had last entered, they found good blood. As they continued along the course, the monarch was spotted dragging himself along the ground in a struggling effort to get to his feet. “My dad had the shotgun since I was trailing along behind the dogs, so he finished him off,” Mitchell stated.

The emotional day came to a close on a less exhausting note, with family and friends coming through by the dozens to see the massively crowned buck. “I even had some friends take off work just to come see him,” Mitchell asserted. The deer scored an astounding 189 4/8 BTR at Simmon’s Sporting Goods in Bastrop, LA, placing him in a notoriously heated competition for first place in the Louisiana typical category. “It seems like for the past several years, bucks in Louisiana have been getting bigger and bigger,” Mitchell boasted. “There’s no telling what’ll come out of this state in the next few years.”

View More News!!!