Editor’s Note: Mossy Oak ProStaffer Bucky Hauser lives in Claudville, Virginia. During the early years of his hunting career, he was a multi-state hunter and often hunted 4 days per week or more from October until deer season ended. He hunted on two farms in Virginia and also Canada, taking many fine bucks and enjoying great outdoor adventures. Bucky lived the hunter’s life we all dream of, but after he turned 40, his hunting focus changed drastically.
I have two daughters, Taylor, 13, and Tillee, 5. We have a corn and soybean field behind our house. Taylor’s grandfather, Fred Hill, had come to our house to take her deer hunting. She was 10 at that time, and I had been taking her hunting with me since she was 6-years old. I was out in my shop working, when Taylor came to the door of my shop. She said, “Daddy, I killed an 8 pointer!” I thought she might have shot a 2-year-old 8-point buck. I quit my work, put Taylor in my truck and drove down to the field. When I rounded the corner where Taylor and her granddad had been hunting, I could see tines sticking up in the corn stubble. Once I finally got out and looked at the deer, I realized the buck would have scored in the low 140s, but had a broken-off brow tine and 8 inches of a main beam broken. He was over 100-yards from where Taylor had shot. We didn’t have to spend any time recovering the deer, because he fell right where Taylor shot him.
I have 12 game cameras on the two farms I hunt, but we never had gotten a picture of this buck. I couldn’t believe how big he was. The deer had 12-inch G2 tines and 10-inch G3 tines with antlers about 18-inches wide. This was a buck most people in our area never would see in a lifetime of hunting. The deer field-dressed 175 pounds, so he was well over 200 pounds live weight. She was using a Knight blackpowder rifle with a Leupold 3-9x50mm scope. She first started shooting that rifle when she was 6-years old. I’ve tried to get her to try other rifles, but she’d rather shoot the muzzleloader than any-other rifle. She shoots a .45-caliber bullet with 150 grains of Pyrodex Pellets and a 175-grain Knight Red Hot, a Barnes bullet. She’d been shooting that gun so much, I wasn’t at all concerned about letting her take a shot out to 200 yards.
