Haynesville, LA’s Steve Lewis is an outdoorsman. He fully understands how special it is to be able to enjoy the great outdoors that we all hold so dear. “People who don’t hunt or spend time in the outdoors don’t realize how special it is to see a flock of ducks coming in at sunrise from a duck blind, or to see a deer feeding at first light. It’s special and I love it,” Lewis explained. His love for the outdoors is what makes the 216 7/8″ buck he harvested on November 24th all the more special. “People don’t kill deer like this around here. This deer looks like it’s from the Midwest or somewhere like that—not Claiborne Parish!” he added.

Lewis knew from trail camera pictures that there were good deer in the area and decided to hunt deer that morning instead of what he had previously planned on hunting—ducks. “It was a warm, rainy morning so I decided to sit in the deer stand instead of the duck blind,” Steve went on to say. At close to 6:50 AM, he was watching the wildlife begin their day around him, when he noticed movement on the ridge he was hunting. It was a deer with its tail up, calmly walking, and Lewis knew he’d better act fast if he wanted to get a shot.

When he finally go the deer in his scope, Lewis saw it was a heavy horned deer but that was all he could tell because the deer had put his head under a holly bush to make a scrape. “All I could see was his shoulder, so I took the shot,” he said. When the fatal round was fired, the deer made it a few yards before piling up, and it didn’t take Lewis long to figure out he had taken a deer of a lifetime. “I remember seeing the deer and saying ‘Lord, Thank you!’ and the next words I remember saying were ‘Kevin, I wish you were here,’” Lewis spoke of his close friend, Kevin Reeder, who lost his battle with cancer in January of this year.

Steve Lewis of Haynesville, LA with his 216 7/8" BTR Non-Typical from Claiborne Parish, Louisiana.

Upon finding his buck, Lewis called his oldest son to tell him of the news. “He couldn’t believe it was an 18-point. The biggest we’ve had on camera is a 9-point,” he explained. When the hunter finally got the deer to his truck, he noticed he was also dragging a stick, but in actuality this “stick” was a drop-tine, bringing the total points on the deer to 19. “I guess this is my 15 minutes of fame,” Lewis added, “because I’ve had people come to the house, had them stop me in the store to shake my hand, and even had them ask to take pictures with them holding the rack.”

I asked Steve if there was any advice he may want to give the readers of BayouBucks.com on how to increase their chances of taking a deer like this, and he quickly responded:

“You can’t kill ‘em on the couch! You gotta hunt and hunt hard. I hunt hard all season and I actually went on six hunts prior to this one and never saw a deer on any of them—which is very unusual for me—but I stayed with it. Persistence is a big part of it!”

Congratulations Mr. Steve on an outstanding buck!