Buck fever.  It’s what drives deer hunters to get out of bed well before the rest of the world, sit in the pouring rain, and shiver in the freezing cold.  That adrenaline fueled rush that we’ve all felt at one point or another at the sight of a rack buck is what we crave hunt after hunt after hunt.  For David Long of Coushatta La, buck fever is something he gets fairly often and on November 22, 2011, he had good reason to get a case of the shakes.

“Two weeks before I killed this deer, I missed him one afternoon.  I don’t know, I just got buck fever and missed him at 99 yards.  It was thundering and lightning pretty good and I just kept thinking that maybe he thought it was thunder instead of a gun shooting,” laughed Long.

Praying that the deer would return, David hunted that same stand off and on for the next two weeks and finally his persistence paid off.

“He finally came out at 5:10 that afternoon right under my feeder.  At first I thought it was just a cypress weed blowing in the wind, but I kept watching it.  Finally I realized that it was a deer, but I couldn’t see any horns at first.  When I put my scope on him I just thought, ‘Oh my Lord, look at the rack on that!’.  He’d put his head down and get a bite of corn and then look up.   When he finally turned sideways, I shot him between the legs on my tripod feeder,” said Long.

David Long shows good scale of just how wide this buck's rack is.

After the deer ran off, David tried his best to wait a short time for the deer to expire.  Wait he did and after an excruciating five minute delay, he’d had enough and went to see if he could find any sign of a fatal hit on the deer.

“I wanted to wait a while, but I just couldn’t.  I got down there and I couldn’t tell where he was standing, I didn’t see any blood, and I thought I had missed him…again!   I even checked the legs on my tripod feeder to make sure I didn’t hit one of them,” exclaimed Long.

Unable to find any sign at all, David began to walk into the area where the deer had ran.   After walking for a little while, things started to pick up for him.

“I just started walking where I thought the deer might have gone and before I knew it, I was at my little bush hogged trail coming in.  I looked to the left and didn’t see anything so I looked to the right and there he was.  When I got to him, I couldn’t believe he was so wide and heavy horned,” Long said.

Overcome by excitement, David began to count the points and came up with a grand total of 13.  As soon as he knew how many points the buck had, he found the nearest stump, climbed on top of it, and began to make the mandatory celebratory telephone calls to family and friends.

“After I had made the calls, I went to get my truck to load him up.  When I got out of the truck, I counted the points again and this time I came up with 14, so it was back to the stump to call everybody back!” Long laughed.

The deer was worth every minute that David added to his cell phone bill.  He toted 14 points, had a whopping inside spread of 24 inches, scored 183 4/8 inches, and weighed 210 pounds.

“I had no idea this buck was back there.  I didn’t have any trail camera pictures of him, but come to find out, a few days ago a guy from a neighboring lease came by the house to see the deer.  He told my wife that this was the deer that he had on camera,” explained Long.

The fever is why we hunt and if you ever loose it, you might as well quit hunting.  David Long explains it well.  “I’ve been hunting most of my life and still to this day, if a doe comes out, my heart goes to beating like when I was a little kid.  It’s just fun.”