In your minds eye, visualize this; you’re occupying a box stand in the middle of a section of woods known to hold big deer.  As much as you enjoy hunting this area, the one draw back is the lack of shooting lanes to help you make a clear shot.  As the morning begins, you finally start to see deer and one is a stud, but the lack of shooting lanes, plus the fact that he is not headed towards you, but that he’s actually putting real-estate between you, is adding pressure to you like you’ve never experienced before.  As the buck keeps his pace, you’re praying for just one shot.  Now, add this to the game; you’re nine years old.  That actually happened on December 24, 2010 to Jude Newton of Bunkie, Louisiana, and to be honest, the boy was more than ready for the task.

“I’ve had Jude hunting with me since he was 2 ½ years old,” says proud papa Matt Newton.  “I’d take him with me and let him sleep in the stand while I hunted.  The shooting skills came a little later.  We have a shooting range on our farm and Jude shoots regularly.  Everything from pistols to rifles, he can handle them like a pro.  He’s nine and he’s already sighting in his own rifle every year,” the elder Newton explained.  With Jude being of small stature, a slight modification had to be done to his hunting rifle for it to fit him properly.  “I put an Axion Blackhawk stock on his Remington Model 700 .270 to fit him better and to help with the recoil.  He’s pretty good with that gun,” laughed Matt.

Jude Newton is all smiles as he shows off an early Christmas present.

On Christmas Eve morning, the duo headed to their stand on the Overton Hunting Club in Avoyells Parish, five miles outside of Bunkie, hoping to kill a doe or one of the bucks they had on their trail camera.  “We had a really nice 10 point on camera and we were hoping that he’d show up.  Jude had never killed a buck before and we had passed on a few bucks this year for one reason or another, so I wanted him to get that deer but I had told him he could shoot a doe if he wanted to,” Matt went on to say.  The hunters settled into their stand and sat back-to-back, making sure to cover as much area as possible.  At 7:15 A.M. a doe appeared but the decision was made to let her walk.  This proved to be a good choice because at 8:27 A.M., everything this young marksman had ever learned about shooting would be tested.  “We were just sitting there and all of the sudden Jude said ‘Daddy, there’s a deer’ and in the same breath he said ‘Daddy, it’s a monster!’.  We only take one rifle with us to the stand because he’s the only one who’s going to shoot, so when he said that, I just reached for the rifle and handed to him without even turning around.  By the time I got turned to see, he was up with the rifle out the window,” explained Matt.  The buck came out at 125 yards and was paralleling the hunters.  With the thick brush and trees preventing him from a good shot, Jude patiently watched and tried his best to get on the deer.  This is where his shooting knowledge played into the young hunters hands.  “Jude knew where the deer was headed and picked an open spot in front of him.  When the buck hit the spot, Jude squeezed off a shot at around 150 yards,” said Matt.  While all of this sounds like it took a few minutes to transpire, it actually only took a few seconds.  “From the time I turned around, until the time he shot was maybe three seconds.  I saw the deer hunch up and run off.  I felt sure he had made a good shot.”