A bunch of big ones
Deer season yields two monster bucks for Arkansans
Hunters young, older and oldest have bagged their biggest bucks this fall in state and out.
Charlie Holt of Stuttgart, a retired banking executive, has taken some nice bucks over a lifetime of hunting in Southeast Arkansas, but he killed the buck of a lifetime on Nov. 30. Holt hasn’t scored the rack yet, but it has 15 scorable points.
Amazingly, Holt nearly passed on the shot due to a case of mistaken identity.
“I thought he was an 8-point,” Holt said. “I nearly second-guessed myself out of shooting the deer.”
At 4:45 p.m., Holt saw the buck slipping like a ghost through a thicket. The buck was coming at Holt, which he said obscured all if the rack’s sticker points. Head on, he said, it looked like a basic mainframe 4x4.
“He was in a thicket and I couldn’t see him real good,” Holt said. “He was walking straight towards me. I didn’t think he was that big of a deer. I put my binoculars on him, but he blended in so well. I let him walk about another 30 yards closer to me, and I shot him at about 60 yards. I had one opening left when pulled trigger, and he’d have been gone.”
A common saying among hunters is that nothing messes up a perfectly good deer hunt as bad as shooting a deer. Experienced deer hunters usually decline, especially in the evening, unless it’s an exceptional buck.
“Once I shot the deer, I had to take care of the deer,” Holt said. “I got on myself pretty good. ‘Why did you shoot that 8-point? Why did you shoot him?’ ”
Deer hunters often experience a phenomenon called “ground shrinkage,” when a buck’s rack looks a lot smaller on the ground than it did at first sight.
“There was no ground shrinkage with this,” Holt said. “This was ground growage. That’s when I saw all the points, I said, ‘Oh, my!’ ”
Hunting nearby was Price Holt, Charlie’s great nephew. Price texted at the sound of the shot. At that time, Charlie believed he had shot an 8-point buck. That was their last communication until Price showed up to help.
“When Price saw that deer, he said, ‘What do you mean eight points?!’ ” Charlie said, laughing. “I said, ‘Yeah. He’s eight on one side! All he could say was, ‘What a deer! What a deer!’
“We took it to the processor, and that’s all that ol’ boy could say that caped him out. ‘What a deer!’ ”
Holt used a Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) chambered in 270 Winchester. His ammunition was 150-grain Winchester Power Points.
Holt said it was not a great day for hunting. The temperature was in the 60s, and deer didn’t move much. He said he saw three deer, including a doe and her fawn.
“I hadn’t seen anything, but you know something’s out there,” Holt said. “I happened to turn and there he was. He never saw me. Never smelled me. He was just easing down through there eating acorns.”
SOONER BRUTES
A father-daughter adventure near Tahlequah, Okla., turned into the hunt of a lifetime for Ashley Carter, 15, and her father John Carter of Little Rock. On Nov. 4, Ashley killed her first deer, a 38-point buck that scored 299 non-typical Boone and Crockett. It will easily net the minimum 195 score necessary to make the all-time Boone and Crockett awards book.
“She was a happy girl,” John said.
Every year, John and Ashley take a father-daughter trip of some sort. They have gone on a shopping trip to Dallas, and they took in a Broadway show in New York.
“A buddy told me this years ago, that a man should do something every year with just you and your daughter,” John said. “This year she wanted to deer hunt. I thought that was cool because she knows I love it. It’s one of those things as a dad that makes you smile.”
The venue was a 600-acre tract owned by one of John’s friends in Cherokee County, Okla. Oklahomans call that part of the state the “Green Country.”
“It’s really pretty,” Carter said. “It’s kind of rolling hills like you see in Northwest Arkansas.”
Ashley and her dad have hunted for a couple of seasons in Montgomery County near Mt. Ida, but in past seasons Ashley used a conventional rifle chambered in 270 Winchester. Ashley is left-handed, so this year John bought her a left-hand Tikka rifle chambered in 243 Winchester. It is a light-kicking cartridge that’s ideal for young and smallframed shooters, but with plenty of power for whitetailed deer. To prepare, they practiced often at a U.S. Forest Service range near John’s hunting cabin near Mt. Ida.
“She practiced for three weekends,” Carter said. “It was really cool watching her getting familiar shooting with a scope.”
The practice was important because the buck’s presentation required a pinpoint shot that almost did not happen. The pair saw the buck, but it saw them, too, and ran. The pair took a ride in their side-by-side UTV and came to a T in the road.
“Which way [do we] go?” Carter said. “There was a 5050 chance either way. We took a right. We ended up seeing him on the edge of a field about 35 yards up the side of a ridge. He thought he was hidden. He was not.
“He was broadside to us, but he had a four-inch sapling at his right shoulder,” Carter continued. “I told her, ‘You’re going have to shoot behind that sapling. You’re going to hit a lung, but you’re going to feel like you’re shooting him too far back. She hit right where she hoped to hit him.”
The buck kicked with its back legs and bolted up the side of the ridge. It stayed in sight until it expired.
“She had that look of sheer panic,” Carter said. “She thought it would drop immediately. She watched it run up the mountain and lie down.
“She was very excited. She was ecstatic. Her heart was racing. It gave her quite a sense of accomplishment. It was a big thing.”
Ashley said she and her dad named her buck, “Right Now.”
“When we saw him, my dad said, ‘That’s your deer,’” Ashley said. “I said, ‘Right now?’ He said, ‘Yes, right now!’ So we call him, Right Now.”
Ashley acknowledges that she will probably never see another buck that big, but she said it’s “pretty cool” to know that she’s been to the mountaintop. She said she wants to keep hunting.
John was thrilled for his daughter, of course, but he tied a bow on the package by killing a monster 12-point. That’s a trophy anywhere, but Ashley reminded us that it’s still 26 points fewer than 38.