Big deer scores in mid 150s on the Boone & Crockett scale.
Art Melancon was ready to go home after two weeks of relaxing, hunting and watching football games over the New Year’s holiday weekend.
After waking up on New Year’s Day and watching the New Orleans Saints, he wanted to load up and head back to Louisiana. But his wife wasn’t ready to go home yet.
“My wife, son and I had had stayed up until about 1 a.m., and I was ready to leave when we got up that morning,” said Melancon, who lives just over the Mississippi River in Louisiana but hunts in Franklin County. “My wife wanted to watch the Saints game, and then she kept telling me to go hunting one last time.
“I really didn’t feel like going, so I just went to the closest stand and got there about 3:15 or so.”
Two hours later, Melancon looked at his phone. He was about to load up and call it a season. The phone said 5:09 p.m.
“When I looked up, I saw movement in the side of the cutover,” he said. “I picked up my binoculars and saw the buck, but couldn’t tell much about him until he walked out in the opening.”
When Melancon got a good look, he knew it was time to shoulder his Browning .270. The Nikon 4x16x50 gathered enough light to give him a good sight line, and the buck dropped in his tracks at 175 yards.
The deer green scored 154 2/8, and Melancon said he sported 11-inch G2s and 10 3/4-inch G3s, with 6-inch brow tines.
Melancon said his club has management goals of taking bucks that carry 8 points or better, at least 160 pounds and 3 1/2 years old. Their selective management has paid off with some good deer and the ability to see some better bucks grow with age.
His holiday whitetail wasn’t the one Melancon was after, though.
“This is the biggest one I’ve ever shot, but I’ve been hunting a nice 8-pointer all season that’s about 18-inches wide with a broken brow tine,” he said. “I have photos of him on the trail camera pictures, and he’s pretty easy to recognize with the broken tine. I run cameras during the off-season so we can get a look at what’s going on.”
The New Year’s buck was a new discovery, though.
“I’d never seen this big buck before,” he said. “We didn’t have any photos of him, nothing. Of all the photos I have and that I study, that broken-tined 8-pointer is the only good one I have photos of. Some of our neighbors said they’d seen (the New Year’s buck) on their cameras.
“When I saw him, it was unbelievable because I didn’t realize we had a deer of that quality on our place.”
Melancon said the two-week hunting getaway was a great way to start the New Year.
“Our son killed a nice 11-pointer the Monday before, right after Christmas,” he said. “Then, this big one I got to end the season: We’re satisfied. We had a good year.”
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