Rack Magazine

Step right up, folks, and behold the St. Francisville monster.

A Louisiana dentist became a social media phenom last year after arrowing a whitetail worthy of its own carnival barker.

Dr. Frank Sullivan got almost as much press as the president last October, all because he shot a sideshow-huge buck that hung out behind his St. Francisville business.

Frank’s dental office overlooks a large hollow in the center of town, which allows bowhunting. He owns almost half of the 50 acres back there, and he’d put out feeders and trail cameras to see what kind of deer traipsed through the place.

He wasn’t the only person aware of the deer his son nicknamed Under Armour (because its antlers resembled the logo). Several people were hunting the buck.

Two days into Louisiana’s 2016 bow season, a hunter shot Under Armour in the shoulder a half-mile from Sullivan’s office. The deer survived.

In December of that year, a policeman came to Frank’s office and told him, “Your big deer just got hit by a car.”

The officer explained the size of the buck and the configuration of its rack. The sheriff’s granddaughter had hit it. The animal rolled atop the hood, its antlers broke the windshield, and then it landed in a roadside ditch.

When the young lady walked down into the ditch, the deer jumped up and ran.

“I looked for Under Armour for about a week and never found him,” Frank said. “Three weeks later, I spotted him behind my office again.”

The incredible whitetail had survived both an arrow and a vehicle collision, looking none the worse for wear.

Eight weeks before the start of the 2017 deer season, a patient told Frank he’d just spotted two coyotes in the hollow. Just as Frank looked out the window, the familiar buck stepped out of the woods.

“Under Armour was panting with his tongue hanging out, and he had two other bucks with him,” Frank said. He filmed the deer with his phone.

It seemed everyone in St. Francisville had heard of the buck by that point, and all the hunters wanted a shot at it. After studying the trail camera photographs of Under Armour from 2016 and 2017, Frank estimated the buck gained about 80 inches of antler in one year.

Frank realized he needed to exercise some self-control. He needed to set some ground rules.

“I decided I wouldn’t go into the woods to check my trail camera cards after 3 p.m., so as not to leave any human odor in the afternoons. I’d only put feed out and check my trail camera pictures before 3:00. Then, if Under Armour was patterning me, he’d think I wouldn’t be there later,” he said.

Fearful he might push the deer off the 22 acres, Frank also vowed not to hunt from his stand two days in a row. In addition, whenever he was in his stand, he decided to stay put until two hours after dark.

While aloft on Oct. 1, Frank spotted about every deer he had trail camera pictures of except Under Armour. He even saw the buck’s frequent traveling companions. The following morning, Frank went in at noon and pulled the trail camera’s flash cards.

The unit right below Frank’s stand showed Under Armour there just before Frank got down to leave the woods. The animal had then returned about three hours after Frank left.

True to his strategy, Frank didn’t hunt the next day. When he went the following day, he didn’t see very many deer. He skipped the next day as well.

Trail camera cards showed the buck at Frank’s stand at 11:30 p.m. and several other times in the night.

“Since Under Armour stayed until almost daylight, I believed he was bedded down on my property,” Frank said.

On Oct. 6, Frank climbed into his stand at 4 p.m., after spooking two deer en route. He heard coyotes howling nearby, watched a doe come out of the thicket to feed before the coyotes spooked her, saw two young bucks feeding on acorns, and a 6-pointer going to some persimmon-flavored Nate’s Buck Bait.

“Next, I looked straight out in front of me and spotted Under Armour stepping out of a privet hedge 24 yards away,” Frank said. “About 75 percent of the velvet was hanging off his bloody antlers. It looked like he was wearing a mop.”

Although Frank had never experienced buck fever, once he saw Under Armour, his heart raced and the hair on the back of his neck tingled. He knew he was in trouble.

“As the buck walked 17 yards from my stand, took two steps, turned and presented a quartering-away shot, I struggled to pull my bowstring,” Frank said. “I was about to touch my mechanical release’s trigger when something spooked him.

“He went down on his front knees like a dog before getting up and quickly moving back along the same trail he’d taken to come to my stand. All I could see were his hooves and ankles in the thicket.

“Next, the big 8-pointer that Under Armour ran with came up and over the creek bank in front of me. I’d named him Tattletale, since he was always nervous,” Frank continued. “Tattletale put his head down and fed on acorns.

“I’d finally calmed down when Under Armour stepped out of the privet hedge again, and I drew my bow and released the arrow when he was at 24 yards,” he added.

At the thwack, Under Armour bolted across the creek and fell.

Frank got down, went to his office and called some of his buddies who had asked to be included if and when he shot the deer. He also called his wife and little girl to come and see the monster buck he’d been talking about for two years.

This article was published in the March 2018 edition of Rack Magazine. Subscribe today to have Rack Magazine delivered to your home.

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