Parker Mahony had not planned on hunting, but he came home with a 12-point buck.
Mahony got a call from his neighbor that he had shot a doe and needed help dragging it out and gutting it. He went out and did what needed to be done, then returned to the neighbor’s house to wash blood off his boots and hands with a garden hose while the neighbor took the deer to be tagged and to drop it off at the butcher.
His neighbor had given Mahony of Lebanon permission to hunt on his land, so he decided to go out hunting for a bit.
He walked in a zigzag motion across the property, but didn’t raise anything. He had jumped a buck a couple of weeks before and sat on a rock on a knoll in the spot where he had jumped the deer.
Mahony said he had been sitting for perhaps 15 minutes and put out four or five doe bleats. Thirty seconds later, Mahony heard what he thought probably was a buck coming to answer the doe bleats.
“Once I got him in my scope, I knew he was the buck I’ve been waiting on for 17 years, since I started hunting when I was 10,” he said. “I’ve shot a few decent deer in that timeframe, but nothing like this.”
He said he focused his scope on the buck and made a perfect shot. The buck dropped instantly. It had been shot at the top of the shoulder and in the lungs.
He called his wife Amanda and told her what happened. Then he called his father Mike, who didn’t believe his son until Mahony FaceTimed with him and started counting off the points. He said when he got up to 12 points, he yelled “YES!!!!” at the top of his lungs.
The 12-point buck weighed 170 pounds.
“I’m so grateful and thankful to have the opportunity to shoot this mature buck. Hopefully my son (Wesley, age 1 ½ ) can be the one to get the chance to shoot a wall hanger like that,” he said.
Mahony said his father has shot a few nice bucks, as have some of his friends, but this was his first time shooting a buck that had a big rack.
He wanted to share the moment with Wesley so he let his young son grab onto the deer’s rack because the boy kept pointing to it. He said Wesley just smiled and laughed when he grabbed it.
Mahony has already delivered the deer to a taxidermist for a shoulder mount, saying he is excited about hanging it on his wall.
“It’s a really good feeling after putting all those years and long days of not seeing anything into hunting and then having this happen,” he said
