Ten-year-old shoots buck night before; finishes deer off after morning hunt.
Collin Ladner wasn’t thrilled about going back to camp for the night after seeing the biggest buck of his life scurry into the woods.
Ten-year-old hunters don’t want to quit. Night? Bah, not a problem. Keep looking for the deer, the one with the giant antlers that thrilled him beyond belief.
But the big 11-point whitetail that eventually scored 153-plus was in bed for the night. So were Collin and his father Greg, who knew waiting for the next day to take out their tracking Lab would be the best option.
The decision came after Greg and Collin were in a two-man stand the evening of Nov. 26 watching a large rye patch on private land. It was late November in Issaquena County, a time when Greg said “you don’t expect to see a deer that big come out in the open like that.”
They had watched the field for a few hours without any action, leading Collin to begin wondering if they should head on to camp. It was about 4:30 p.m., just before everything “gets right” for that evening movement. He was convinced to stay a little longer to see if anything happened.
About 10 minutes after 5, out stepped the buck.
“We had pictures of him and knew he was in the area, but you never dream he’d step out in a patch of ryegrass that time of year,” Greg Ladner said. “I told him to just put the crosshairs on the shoulder, take his time and do it just like when we practiced.”
Collin shouldered his .243 and fired.
The buck took off across the plot into the woods, and the two went back to get Shockey, their 2-year-old Lab so it could hit the blood trail.
“We found blood right away, and he just took us on a trail of, I don’t know, 400 to 500 yards of blood,” Ladner said. “Not a lot, and it was dark blood, so I thought Collin hit the front shoulder kind of low.
“We trailed him for about 500 yards or so, and Shockey let out a single bark like he’d jumped the deer.”
They pulled off the dog and headed back to camp for the long night.
“It was a very interesting night,” Greg Ladner said. “I told him we’d hunt until about 9 o’clock the next morning in a different stand,” the elder Ladner said.
That decision proved important to the recovery of young Collin’s trophy.
“We probably were about half a mile from where we’d hunted the previous evening,” Greg Ladner said. “By 7 a.m. he was ready to get the dog and start trailing again. I got him to sit there until 9, and then we started back to camp.”
They were walking through the woods they’d crossed just a few hours before in the darkness when they were stopped by motion.
A doe jumped from a downed treetop nearby, and they stopped to watch. She flitted away and they resumed walking.
“She was probably 70 to 80 yards in front of us when she got up, so I wanted to see where she’d been laying,” the elder Ladner said. “We veered over toward the treetop, and there was the buck.”
They were stunned. The buck was still alive, but Collin quickly dispatched it.
“If I could have the celebration on video we had in the woods, you’d really have something,” Greg Ladner said. “Here’s a 10-year-old who has shot a deer a lot of grown men would never see. It was the happiest hunting experience I’ve ever been part of.
“He was glowing in the photos. I don’t think something like that could happen again in a million years. I honestly think we walked past that deer before daylight and didn’t see him.”
Ladner said his son started hunting with him about five years ago, began shooting the .243 off a bipod a year later and killed his first deer at age 7. After finding his big buck and getting back to camp, he showed the wisdom of a veteran.
“He told me he was going to sleep late the next morning,” Ladner said, laughing.
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