Second chances. Some of life’s greatest accomplishements are made on a second chance. It’s almost as if life looks at the person who just squandered every chance to fulfill a lifelong dream and says, “You know what? You’ve done everything in your power to be in this moment and I know you can do this, so I’ll let you try this just one more time.” Nicole Casida knows all about second chances, and when life was gracious enough to give her a second chance at a monster buck she’d been after since early bow season of 2010, she didn’t disappoint.
If you know anything about the Casida’s, then you know how much they love the outdoors and love each other. Nicole and her husband Joe are best friends and each others best hunting buddy. But Nicole hasn’t always been a hunter and if it weren’t for Joe, she probably never would have become one. “I never had hunted before I met Joe in 2003. Back then he owned 100 acreas of land, and since then we’ve bought pieces of land here and there. Now we own 350 acres and all we do is manage it for the wildlife. We love it,” explained Nicole.
The Casida’s take their hunting seriously. They keep tabs on their deer by use of several trail camera’s that they start using in late summer, they plant numerous food plots that are used by all the wildlife in their area, and they only harvest mature deer on their land in Natchitoches Parish, La. Although they like to “know” the deer on their place, this buck was a stranger to them until Nicole got a tease from him in early bow season. “I had to work the opening day and the day after, so my first hunt was the Sunday after bow season had opened. At around 8:00 A.M., I heard what I thought was a hog coming in to my set up. It didn’t take too long before I saw it was a nice eight point and this big deer. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” said Nicole. If seeing him wasn’t enough, the buck started to lightly spar with the eight point and then proceeded to bed down not 90 yards from Nicole and her bow. “My heart was racing as I watched him through my binoculars. I even watched him go to sleep,” laughed Nicole. Soon the buck woke up and she knew she’d better try something to draw him in closer. “He got up from his bed and started walking towards where the 8 point had been. I grunted at him once and he sort of looked my direction but kept walking, so I grunted again. This time he stopped with his rack right in the sunlight. He was the most beautiful deer I’d ever seen,” Nicole said, reliving the moment. The buck ended up leaving without coming any closer and that’s when Nicole dedicated her 2010 hunting season to him.
“We changed our strategy a lot this year,” Joe Casida said. “Nicole used to go out religiously every three days and hand throw corn out at all of our stands, but this year we went a different route. We put out Moutrie Phantom feeders and a few On-Time feeders instead of going in and putting pressure on them like we were before. We’ve also been mixing in some Big & J’s BB2 supplement in with our corn. With our stands, we’ve been paying more attention to the wind, being as scent free as possible, and being more mobile. I think it’s paid off. We’ve gone from four wheelers, to using an all electric HuntVe vehicle. All in all, we’ve been seeing more deer this year than years past, and the difference is pretty noticeable.”
They began to worry earlier in the season, though, when their trail camera’s didn’t produce any bucks they had seen the season before. Then on November 5, all of their worries went away when they got a picture of the buck Nicole had seen a few weeks before. “After that, she started hunting like a woman possesed,” laughed Joe. “Every minute she wasn’t at work, she was in the woods hunting. I’ve never seen the determination in a hunter like she has done the last few weeks. I’m pretty impressed.”
This picture lit the fire in Nicole Casida to put this buck on her wall.
The afternoon of November 26th found the determined lady huntress in the woods, looking to fill her second buck tag of the year. At around 4:10, she noticed movement and antlers. As she shouldered her rifle, she saw a spike in the scope, but knew she saw better horns than that, so she instinively searched around the spike for the bigger deer. When she found him, a simple squeeze of the trigger brought down her biggest buck to date; a nice sized seven point. “I was pumped. I’d killed an eight point before but he wasn’t nearly as big as this seven. Right then and there I decided that my last buck tag was for the eleven point I’d seen earlier. Nothing else will do,” explained Nicole.
