Native Texas Giant

Written by Craig Nyhus

Saturday, 06 October 2007

Marko Barrett of San Antonio with a Native Texas Giant Marko Barrett of San Antonio has been patiently observing a giant buck on the family’s Las Raices ranch in Webb County. Barrett, who manages the native deer herd on the 4,200-acre high-fenced ranch, shot the massive buck on Oct. 1 during the Managed Lands Permit season that allows rifle hunting. “We’ve been seeing him for five years,” the 29-year old Barrett said. “And he’s scored over 200 for two years, but last year he fell below 200 because of the horrible rainfall conditions. But this year we’ve received 56 inches of rain and he took off.” The seven-year-old buck, shot at 120 yards from a brush blind, wasn’t coming to a feeder. “We were fortunate to catch him crossing a road,” he said. “We knew he wouldn’t come to a feeder, but we did put some alfalfa pellets upwind hoping he would move in our direction.” The hard part was when the deer made it to the sendero and was facing directly toward the brush blind before he finally turned. “I just looked at my shoes,” he said. Barrett described the management program at the ranch as nothing fancy. “I call it rifle-managed native genetics,” he said. “These are all native deer (the ranch has no breeding operation), they were all born here, but we keep other deer out with the high fence. We feed protein year-round, and we use multiple feeders at each location (one for every 160 acres) so the dominant buck won’t keep the others from the feed.” When the buck was dropped, Barrett realized how much the antlers had grown. “Los Cazadores initially scored him at 273 3/8, but there was a deduction because he was in velvet,” Barrett said. “But every year when we found his sheds they were all busted up, so I didn’t want to wait until he came out of velvet.” The current Los Cazadores score for the buck is 268 6/8, according to its Web site. Barrett was glad his patience was rewarded. “But to our credit, we did let him walk three years when he was over 190,” he said. “We have good genes and we got really lucky with this deer.”

Last Updated ( Saturday, 06 October 2007 )

 

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