ET Bruisers: Early season whoppers represent letting the young guys walk

Sound deer and habitat management practices coupled with a budding interest in letting young bucks walk continues to pay off with some handsome whitetails for deer hunters across eastern Texas.

Two of latest to reap the rewards of keeping those itchy trigger fingers in check are Heidi Newman of Maydelle and Chris Barrilleaux of Splendora.

On the morning of Oct. 3, Newman was hunting on a 5,000-acre hunting club in Anderson County when she brought down a buck with a remarkable crown.

The free-ranging whitetail has not yet been officially taped for Texas Big Game Awards, but it has been rough scored at 163 Boone and Crockett inches before any deducts for lack of symmetry between the chocolate-colored antlers.

That’s a tall tally any way you slice it, but what makes Newman’s buck particularly noteworthy is that most of the score comes from a massive typical frame with exceptionally long main beams of 26 6/8 and 24 2/8 inches. The buck also sports a short kicker off the left brow and a one-inch G4 that barely makes it a main frame 9 pointer.

Lufkin taxidermist Frank McCarty has the rack in-house.

“It’s jolly whopper for sure,” McCarty said. “It’s got great mass and tine length, but you don’t really realize how big this deer is until you look at the main beams.” 

Newman’s lease is one of 26 clubs under the umbrella of North Neches deer management cooperative in Anderson and Cherokee counties. Adjoining leases vary in size from around 650 acres to more than 9,000.

Together the clubs add up to more than 72,000 contiguous acres. It is arguably among the largest hunting cooperatives in the state.

The beauty of it all is that club members within the co-op operate under similar guidelines aimed at the common goal of producing better quality deer and, ultimately, older bucks with larger antlers.

The cooperative formed in 2005 with a blanket rule in place to protect bucks under 3 1/2 years old from harvest. A few years ago, wildlife biologist and Forest Resource Consultants lease manager Don Dietz  bumped the minimum age restriction to 4 1/2 years to help more bucks cross the threshold to maturity.

The program has worked well, as evidenced by the significant uptick in quality bucks that have been taken on participating clubs over the years.

"When we first started, hunters acted like we raised the rent and took away their bucks!" Dietz said. "Two years later they were showing me game camera pictures of mature bucks they had let walk the past season. When I asked them why they passed on legitimate bucks they all said the same thing: `I want to see what he looks like next year!’”

Like other outfits in the co-op, Newman’s lease operates under a Managed Land Deer Permit (MLD) program approved by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

Hunters on MLD clubs that meet a certain criteria may use rifles to take deer a full month before the November general season. It’s a fringe benefit that allows hunters more flexibility in managing deer herds. Plus, it provides the opportunity to go after bucks before they go on a testosterone high that can cause them to drift or wreck their antlers in sparring matches with other bucks that challenge their dominance.

Newman’s buck, believed to be 4 1/2 to 5 1/2 years old, was no stranger to club members. Her husband, Jacob, was among those who had been watching the deer on game camera the last two seasons. He nicknamed the buck “Wile E. Coyote.”

“The first time I saw him, he was getting chased by coyotes, so the name sort of stuck,” he said. “He was one of those deer you could look at and tell he was going to grow up to be something special one day. His main beams were probably 21 inches as a 2 1/2-year-old. My guess is he was probably in the 150s last year.”

Newman said she shot the deer at 150 yards shortly after daylight while manning a tower blind with her father-in-law, Rodney Newman. She claims the buck showed up at a corn feeder when it was still too dark to see.

“We could tell it was a big-bodied deer, but that’s about it,” she said. “We figured it was him, because he usually showed up any time corn was on the ground. I had to wait and hope he stuck around.”

Likewise, an annoying old friend that visits Newman each time she throws down on a buck showed up right on schedule.

“I still get buck fever every time,” she said. “This is my third buck, and it still happens. I don’t get nervous in the stand, but once I pick up the gun or start getting ready to shoot, it’s nerve-racking. It’s an exciting, scary feeling all wrapped into one. I was shaking pretty bad.”

SEARCH ON THE TRINITY

Barrilleaux knows all about buck fever. The veteran archer has arrowed more than two dozen bucks in a lifetime of bow hunting. Admittedly, he sometimes still gets the jitters at the sight of tall tines at close range.

The San Jacinto County 10-pointer that showed at his ground blind on the morning of Oct. 4 didn’t rattle Barrilleaux too bad. But the bizarre search and recovery effort that followed a 22-yard broadside shot brought on a mountain of anxiety far worse than any case of buck fever he can recollect.

Barrilleaux said he saw the arrow connect with buck behind its right shoulder, after which the deer ran into a nearby hay field and laid down. Its head was in plain view, about 60 yards away.

“I’m thinking he’s done, so I just stayed put and waited,” he recalled. “I had just texted another hunter on our lease (A.J. Downs) when I saw the buck get up and hop the fence. At that point, I’m thinking, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’”

Rather than risk pushing the deer, Barrilleaux stayed still and glassed the buck along the adjacent wood line for about 15 minutes before it eventually disappeared.

The music started roughly 90 minutes later. 

“I heard a bunch of coyotes started cutting up, just like they do at night,” he said. “They sounded like they were in the opposite direction the deer had gone. It was really strange.”

Moments later, several coyotes appeared in the field and two of them struck out on the scent of the wounded buck. Barrilleaux was on the way to investigate when he saw the deer racing across the field with a pair of coyotes  on its heels.

“He was gettin’ it, too,” Barrilleaux said. “I watched him run for about 800 yards. He crossed a road, went into the woods and headed straight for the Trinity River.”

The buck had almost swam the width of the river by the time the hunter arrived. He spotted the deer standing on a sandbar about the time Downs, his daughter, Karis, and brother, Quentin, arrived in a side-by-side. The commotion pushed the buck over the river bank and into the woods on the opposite side.

The river is too deep to wade, so continuing the chase on foot was out. The men thought about fetching a flatbottom from their camp, but the river bank was way too steep to get the boat in and out.

The most logical option was to contact the landowner and ask for permission to enter the property from the opposite side, the hunter said. Luckily, the rancher agreed.

“Quentin and Karis stayed on our side of the river in case the buck came back across, while A.J. and I drove around,” he said. “It took about 30 minutes to get there.”

Initially, the men considered going to look for blood at the spot where the buck was last seen. Instead, they chose to begin the search from the outside and work their way through woods towards the river.

Barrilleaux said they had made a wide loop and veered towards the river when they discovered the buck piled up in a small opening.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “We hadn’t gone 50 yards in, and there he was. That buck could have gone any direction and we walked right up on him—I’m talking 13 yards. We couldn’t do that again in a million years. It was like finding a needle in a hay stack.”

It was a dandy needle at that.

The 6 1/2-year-old buck has been unofficially scored at 155 6/8 gross as a typical and ranks among the best bucks Barrilleaux has ever taken with his bow.

It’s another good example of what can happen when hunters let the young guys walk.