Buckmasters Magazine

The only board for this game was a sea of hardwood saplings best suited for four-legged players.

Colonel Mustard did not do it in the library with a lead pipe. Miss Scarlet did not do it in the kitchen with a knife. And Professor Plum didn’t do it in the study with a revolver.

In the game of Clue that played out in central Louisiana during the long Christmas break of 2013, ’twas John Prior who drew blood, with a rifle, in a place called Honey Brake.

The 50-year-old Georgia businessman and designer of bass fishing lures might not have been the only one to make a shot count during that extended week, but he definitely won the game.

John was among 10 die-hard hunters the legendary angler Hank Parker brought together that year to lease the deer hunting rights on some of Honey Brake’s 38,000 acres for three seasons. Honey Brake is part of the Louisiana Delta Plantation south of Jonesville.

Prior to the season, the local guides erected 13 shooting houses, since there are almost no trees suitable for stands within the vast tract of mostly WRP (wetland reserve program) ground.

John, who used to design and custom-paint lures for some of the biggest names in professional bass fishing, including Parker, signed on without ever stepping foot on the property. He arrived there on the night of Dec. 25 with a clear calendar. The whole gang was sure they were going to be there during the peak of the rut.

“Three or four days in, I think we all realized it was only a trickle rut, at best,” John said. “We were seeing plenty of does, but not a lot of bucks.”

Even so, other group members managed to shoot what John called “the easy bucks,” the mature whitetails that had been mugging regularly for the outfit’s many trail cameras. The guys who hunted those spots literally drew numbers out of a hat each day.

After four days of drawing unproductive numbers and sitting and hoping, John became stir crazy. That’s not how he hunts back home in Georgia, where he likes to carry a climber in to areas he’s cyber-scouted.

Rather than continue drawing numbers, he decided to “go mobile” with a popup blind barely big enough to accommodate him and a cameraman, a prerequisite, since all hunts were being filmed for Hank’s “Flesh and Blood” television show.

The next few days, John not only mounted his own reconnaissance, but he also became a sponge for information. And all clues pointed to the property’s easternmost section, which was the least pressured. Going there would also keep him from interfering with anyone else’s vigil.

By the ninth day, he’d collected almost every puzzle piece he could find. He had information from hunters, guides and trail camera photos, and he dumped it all into a little black box. He also keyed in the levee where he and his cameraman had seen two of the tract’s “most wanted” bucks in their headlights early one morning.

Before John even arrived in Louisiana, he’d plugged in the 13 stand locations on his GPS unit. While there, he also keyed in places where mature bucks had been photographed or seen. With those points marked, he took another look at the vast tract on Google Earth.

A friend introduced him to the latter about three years ago, and he’s taken full advantage of it ever since.

“I could literally see the deer trails in that WRP,” he said. “It was unreal.”

Another tip came from one of the guides, who told him of a stand on the eastern side that hadn’t been hunted in a week. He said the place was littered with fresh rubs and scrapes. And one of the last pieces was when the biggest of the trail camera bucks walked a nearby levee. Hank could see it from a quarter-mile away, and it was close to John’s setup that day, but John couldn’t see the levee or the deer.

“After all that, I decided the deer must be walking a 3-mile circle,” he said. “Deciding where to set up along that route was the key.

“Most of that WRP is so thick, there’s really no need for a deer to come out of it unless it has a reason,” he continued.

On day 10, he and his cameraman took the popup blind to set up close to an intersection of deer trails. They go in exceptionally early because it takes time to erect the blind, put all their gear inside, and then arrange the camera.

Ten minutes after daylight, John looked up and saw the buck of his dreams standing in a shooting lane. He thought it was there to snuffle up some C’mere Deer, but it was actually shadowing some does — or they were shadowing him.

John couldn’t shoot the deer as soon as he saw it, because the camera was in the way. And it could NOT be moved. So, kneeling, he wrapped his right arm around the tripod, almost squeezing it in the crook, and touched the trigger.

“My heart was going 300 beats a minute. I couldn’t shoot unless we had it on film,” he said. “That was our agreement, no matter how big a deer it was.”

The recoil knocked the camera’s focus off the deer during that crucial moment when the bullet hit home, but the cameraman missed only a couple of seconds before refocusing on the deer lying on the ground. Two of the three does the men hadn’t seen in the WRP stepped out afterward and stood within 6 inches of the dead buck.

“We had to run them off,” John said.

John was afraid Hank would be disappointed that they hadn’t filmed the “money shot,” but that wasn’t the case. Hank couldn’t believe they managed to even get off a shot.

Even so, John says he’ll be carrying a portable tripod-type stand whenever he returns to Louisiana. He doesn’t want to think about how a close-quarters popup blind almost robbed him of the buck that eclipses his former best, a 174-incher (spread included).

“This was not an easy hunt,” he said. “I gathered the right information on that deer. For six of those days, I hunted from daylight ’til dark ... from box stands, a popup, platform stand and even ground blinds. Hunting down there is a whole ’nother world, and I would’ve never experienced it had it not been for Honey Brake and Hank’s phone call.”

And a GPS. And Google Earth. And from asking questions. And from being able to hold it together while contorting himself like a groom locking arms with his new bride to sip the reception’s first glass of champagne.

Viewers, like the TV show’s host, will most likely forgive the nanosecond lapse and the missing impact shot.

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