SMOKE

A youth hunter’s first buck often packs the goods for a pretty good story.

Addi Loving’s tale is a doozie Fittingly, so is the buck she calls “Smoke.” The story is especially noteworthy because it unfolded in the company of a longtime family friend and culminated with a bruiser of a whitetail taken along the San Jacinto river bottom within the distant shadows of downtown Houston, roughly 40 miles away.

Loving is 16-year-old junior at Crosby High School and works as a tour guide for Unlimited ATV Rentals. Her boss and hunting mentor is Chris Carroll of Longview, a 43-year old veteran hunter who feels at home in the woods and knows a solid buck when he sees one.

Carroll took Loving under his hunting wing this season and went the extra mile in hopes of helping her put her first buck tag on a shooter to be proud of.

It took nearly a dozen sits to get the job done, but Loving eventually closed the deal on the morning of November 22 with a handsome 12 pointer that is way more than respectable.

Think bull of the woods. With a net Boone and Crockett score of 164 7/8, the buck is sure to be among the top free ranging Pineywoods typical whitetails reported to the Texas Big Game Awards this season and top buck from Harris County.

The antlers gross 170 7/8 before deducts for lack of symmetry between the two sides; the net score is 164 7/8. Lance Tippett of Longview taped the buck for TBGA.

“It was a really nice deer, by far the biggest I’ve ever scored,” Tippitt said. “You don’t see many typicals like that around here. He’s definitely one to be proud of.”

Buck of a Lifetime

Most hunters will hunt for a lifetime and only dream of bagging a 170-inch typical, much less get lucky enough to cross paths with one and ultimately seal the deal.

While Lady Luck was definitely in Loving’s corner that day, she made a lot of her own luck along the way.

In Carroll’s opinion, Loving was like a model of persistence as she spent dozens of odd hours hunkered down in a ground blind — waiting and watching in hopes that a good buck might come her way. Her coach was at her side through it all and they prayed for success more than once.

Among other details, Carroll made sure she role played every deer that passed by, bracing the rifle and scoping the vitals each time to ensure she would be ready at go when it counted.

Translation: The chick can shoot and knows the drill. “Addi definitely earned this deer, no doubt about it,” Carroll said. “She would have been perfectly happy with basket rack eight pointer. To come away with a buck like this is truly a blessing. She’s hooked now. She’s eaten up with it.” Carroll added partner is fully aware of the caliber of buck she tagged as her first deer and is grateful for the opportunity.

“It was such a cool experience I’ll never forget,” she said. “I’ve always liked hunting, but I love it now.”

The Hunt for Smoke

The quest for Addi’s first buck began in early November, when the two hunters began scouting an unsuspecting thicket in the far corner of their 400-acre lease near Crosby.

Carroll had spotted the isolated area on an aerial map a while back, but never took the time to check it out until this season. What he found there was an isolated sanctuary cluttered with deer sign, most fresh rubs. Hog sign was nonexistent.

“It was really thick in there — sort of a bottleneck,” he said. “A half dozen of the rubs were eye openers and two really good ones,” he said. “One of them was on an eightinch tree and looked like something you’d see in Illinois or some of the other northern states. I felt like we were in his bedroom and we didn’t need to be messing around.”

The hunters erected a ground blind at the head of a dim shooting lane to take advantage of a prevailing southeast wind. They also scattered some corn along the lane and secured a non-cellular game camera to monitor the area.

Carroll said they made about nine sits in the stand during the first two weeks of the season with no success. The biggest buck they saw or had pictures of was an 18 inch, eight pointer that Loving would have gladly shot had she got the chance.

She said the eight pointer showed itself once, but quickly melted into the underbrush before she was able to get a clear shot.

The Stars Line Up

Shift to Nov. 22.

The hunters arrived at the blind well before daylight. Four does showed up about 7:15 a.m. and eventually wandered off. Roughly 15 minutes later something shocking happened. Seemingly from nowhere, a giant whitetail neither of them were aware of merged from the thicket and came tooling into the shooting lane all alone.

Carroll knew right way they were looking at a mature whitetail. Interestingly, they later discovered a stellar video of the buck that was captured hours earlier, during wee hours of the night “When a deer like that pops out at 110 yards you don’t need the binoculars,” he said. “He literally blew me away. I was antsy, but Addi seemed pretty calm. I definitely had buck fever worse than she did.”

Loving remembers the moment Carroll gave her the green light to touch the safety on the .308.

“He whispered ‘smoke him’,” she said. “That’s how I came up with the nickname ‘Smoke.”

Loving’s shot was quick and right on the mark. She said the deer piled up in the dense thicket, about 50 yards away.

“Once I saw him, I was really excited — jumping up and down and screaming,” she said.

The Harris County buck was certainly something to be excited about.

Matt Williams is a freelance writer based in Nacogdoches. He can be reached by email, mattwillwrite4u@yahoo. com.

Editors Note: Loving posted a really cool video of the season-long hunt for Smoke, along with the nighttime game camera footage of the buck, on her Facebook page. They are worth checking out, facebook.com/reel/921449070449593.