October usually finds Louisiana deer hunters testing the woods with a bow, hunting, but not really feeling the pressure to kill a good buck as they normally do during the later months.  Chris Soileau of Zachary, La starts feeling the pressure on October 1 and it doesn’t end until his three tags are filled.  “It’s hard to get a good buck after November 1, so I bow hunt trying to get a good one early,” Soileau said.  Its show’s in his trophy room too, with five Pope and Young deer to fall to his Reflex Growler.  He and his cohorts like to kill good deer on their lease in West Feliciana Parish and they’ll do whatever it takes to get it done.  Their plan?  Harvest bucks that are at least 4 ½ year old, and be sure to fill their doe tags.  “We’re pretty dedicated to our QDM program that we have.  We’ve been doing it for about 12 years and it’s been paying off for us.  We have about 1000 acres we lease, around 40 acres of that is planted in clover, and we run trail camera’s a lot.  We had two pictures of this buck in September, and I knew it would be a challenge to get him before he went straight nocturnal,” remarked Soileau. 

 On October 14th, Chris decided to hunt the area where they had taken the pictures of the buck, hoping he’d get a shot.  Not long after getting into his stand, he saw movement and grabbed his bow.  It was the deer that they had images of, but the wind blew in the bucks favor and he promptly left before coming into bow range.  October 17th found Chris again hunting the buck’s territory and again the buck appeared.  This time Chris came to full draw, but the buck stopped before a clear shot was present and when Chris had to let his bow down, the buck spotted him and bounded off.  “I knew then that I was running out of chances with him, so I pulled out for nearly a week,” Soileau said, “but when a cold front came through on the 22^nd, I knew now was the time.”  Chris got in his stand that afternoon and watched as several does fed in the food plot he was hunting.  Then, just like he was pulled in on a string, the buck came out to feed with just ten minutes of daylight left.  At 22 yards, his Grim Reaper broad head tore through the buck with a double lung shot, and left him laying in Chris’s trail, 25 yards away.

 The buck was a total brute.  He had a total of 8 points, weighted 235 lbs, and had an impressive green score of 153″.  Soileau’s great season didn’t end there.  He filled his last two tags with two more great bucks.  What now?  What else would a Daddy do than to scout for his daughter, Chelsea?  The apple didn’t fall too far from the tree, because she ended up killing a 130″, 240lb, 8pt not 100 yards from their camp with her Ruger 7mm-08.  The rack on the young lady’s deer sported a massive 21 ½” inside spread.  BayouBucks.com sends out a big congratulations to both Chris and Chelsea Soileau on taking two fine Louisiana bucks!