One of the things I really enjoy as an outdoors writer is interviewing Louisiana deer hunters who have been successful in downing a trophy buck. I get to vicariously sit in the stand with them as if I’m looking over their shoulders as they describe just what they see, including when the buck steps out.
Afterward, I transcribe what they tell me and convert their description of the hunt into a story.
The majority of my articles have to do with bucks taken on land that is known for having the quality to produce good deer. However, I sometimes run into situations where a real trophy was taken on land that, on the surface, is anything but quality habitat.
Such has been the case for the past several seasons of bucks that are growing to outsized proportions on lands where you normally wouldn’t expect heavy bodied; heavy antlered bucks to show up with regularity.
Sabine Parish is an area of red clay and pine trees and unless something is drastically done to improve the habitat, fork horned and scraggly six or eight points is about all you come to expect coming off the land.
Ryan Masters hunts on lands in Sabine Parish and over the past several years, his club has regularly produced some outstanding bucks. How does he do it?
“In 1992, we started out with 200 acres and over the years we have added more acreage we either own or lease to where today we control some 3,000 acres. Early on, we had the philosophy of ‘if it’s brown, it’s down.’
“We have a son, Joel, who was born with spina bifida and has been wheelchair-bound all is life, and I wanted him to have the chance to take a really nice buck. I knew we had to do something different,” said Masters.
Initially, the club where Masters manages started with limiting any buck taken to six points or better and later went to eight points with antlers outside the ears. Results, however, were marginal.
“In 2012, I had the opportunity to hunt outside Louisiana in the mid-west in states like Illinois, Kansas and Missouri and saw that they had better deer there. What was special was that those states only provide one buck tag per hunter per season so the key to bucks being larger is that they had time to grow. In 2015, we settled on one buck per year here but also it had to be 4 ½ years old and later we moved that to 5 ½ years.
“In 2016, we realized that nutrition was also part of the equation so we started a nutrition program and began feeding deer good nutritional food beginning during the off-season. We figured out everything a deer needs to grow big bodies and big antlers,” Masters continued.
The result? Three years into the program, Masters killed his first 170-inch buck and members of his club now consistently get bucks every season in the 150s and 160s. Earlier this season, Joel, sitting in his wheelchair in a blind with his dad, set a new record with a 15-point buck that measured 183 3/8 inches and weighed 220 pounds.
If you want to raise big deer but the only land you hunt is of marginal habitat, do like Ryan Masters did. Offer nutritional food for deer throughout the year and limit each hunter to only one quality buck per season. What he has done is to turn the red clay, pine hills of Sabine Parish into one of the best deer hunting areas in Louisiana.
Contact Glynn at glynnharris37@gmail.com