Trevor Haycock holds up the antlers of the 11-point, 260-pound deer he killed on Dec. 8 in Kansas.

A collegiate baseball player from New Iberia who spends as much time as humanly possible hunting and fishing, mostly hunting deer and waterfowl in the fall and winter, loves to tell the story about the biggest deer he killed this season, his personal best buck since his first deer kill at age 6 or 7.

Trevor Haycock, 21, calls it a “pretty funny story” as he pokes a little fun at himself about that memorable day Dec. 2 near Hutchinson, Kansas. He shouldered his rifle to shoot one of two does that walked into his view while he was walking the plains, he said, squeezed the trigger of his .270-caliber Weatherby Vanguard rifle, and “click.”

Haycock, a senior in eligibility at McPherson College, had forgotten to load a bullet into the chamber of the bolt-action rifle. As it turned out, that was a fortunate oversight.

Those does left, he said, “Then a little buck comes up. I’m debating if I wanted to shoot or not. He wasn’t going anywhere.

“I was watching the little buck (through the rifle scope). The little buck turned his head and looked behind him, so I took the scope and panned behind him where he was looking,” Haycock said.

His heartbeat quadrupled at the sight of a bigger buck. The hunter was in a prone shooting position on the ground.

“As soon as I saw the horns, I knew it was a shooter. I put a scope on the body” and fired a bullet, which hit the deer in the heart at a distance of about 150 yards.

“It was a perfect shot,” he said, proudly.

The buck bolted for about 5 yards, then stopped dead in its tracks, he said.

Haycock, the son of Kenneth and Wanette Haycock of New Iberia, didn’t have “buck fever” before he pulled the trigger because, he said, he didn’t have time and didn’t want to give himself time to get it. The buck fever set in as he walked to the downed deer and saw the size of the rack, he said. 

The New Iberia Senior High graduate (Class of 2014) had downed an 11-point, 260-pound deer.

“Oh, yeah, that’s a big Kansas deer for you,” he said.

However, it wasn’t as heavy as one he shot with the same rifle last season in Kansas, a buck that weighed approximately 320 pounds but with an 8-point rack. About that one, he said, “He took up the whole back of the truck.”

After dragging the latest big deer off the farmland where he has permission from the farmer to hunt, Haycock called his father and shared the news. He wanted to change some plans with a taxidermist who had two other bragging-sized deer he has killed, one here in Acadiana and another one his freshman season at McPherson College.

“I told him we’ll have to go pick the other two up. This one’s going on the wall,” he said about the 11-pointer.

The environmental science major, who plans to be a wildlife enforcement agent in Louisiana after he graduates in another year, got his shot at the new PB buck after taking his finals at McPherson College. He was coming back home for the holidays, for sure, he said, but there were three days remaining in Kansas’ short two-week rifle season for deer. He envisioned filling out a doe tag but didn’t imagine he’d use the one buck tag for the season.

Haycock said he told his parents he’d return home as soon as he got a deer or after deer hunting for three days. He got more than he bargained for.

“Oh, it feels great. The only thing I don’t like about it, it’ll probably be my biggest deer ever,” he said. “It feels good. Ever since I was a little kid my dad has had an 11-point on the wall he killed in Arkansas. I always told him I’d get one that big or bigger.”

After graduation from NISH, Haycock found a deer and waterfowl hunting mecca in Kansas, somewhat akin to the one he enjoyed most of his life in the Sportsman’s Paradise. That’s where he decided to continue playing baseball.

The pitcher/outfielder/first baseman had to scratch pitching early in his collegiate baseball career after suffering a partial rotator cuff tear while he was on the mound.

Last season he hit at a .325 clip with seven home runs and more than 30 RBI. The Bulldogs went 24-30.

His sophomore season, he befriended the Smiths, who own a farm and became like a second family to the young man from the heart of Cajun Country. He’s been hunting there and elsewhere in the state ever since.

Four Bulldogs teammates also hunt with him. Surprisingly, he said, despite a MC roster loaded with home state players, only Jakob Shields of DeSota, Kansas, is a hunter and part of their hunting group. The others are Luke Whitfield, a right-handed pitcher from Berthoud, Colorado; Jeromy Denton, another righty from Mesa, Arizona, and Dominick Ramos, a catcher from Fresno, California.

“It’s awesome. The whole team likes each other,” Haycock said, “but the ones who hunt are like brothers, inseparable at times.”

Whitfield is an expert goose hunter and they have had some rewarding goose hunts this season, Haycock said.

“We killed lots of geese there,” he said, noting they limited out on geese in less than 20 minutes on four weekend trips.

Haycock said he was introduced to waterfowl hunting and bass fishing with topwaters, notably a small Hula Popper, by his paternal grandfather, the late Chester Haycock, who died Sept. 18, 2012, at age 73. The rifle the young outdoorsman hunts with belonged to him.

He said his maternal grandfather, Oswald Buteaux of New Iberia, got son-in-law Kenneth Haycock into deer hunting. Kenneth Haycock passed the passion down to his son.

Haycock also is a proficient bowhunter. He uses a Hoyt Nitrum 30 bow and Victory Micro-Shaft carbon arrows.

The NISH graduate has had a full schedule since he got back to New Iberia for the Christmas break. He scouted and hunted deer for days in the Atchafalaya Basin before getting a bad case of the flu. His health returned enough late this past week, so he planned on deer hunting this weekend with his dad.

He will leave Monday, New Year’s Day, to go back to McPherson College. Baseball and softball players must take a class between semesters, he said.

After that, he’s seriously considering an offer to go play summer baseball in Canada, where one of McPherson College’s assistant baseball coaches, Canadian Kyle MacKinnon, has coached teams in Alberta, Canada, for the past two seasons in the Western Major Baseball League.

Haycock figures he can continue playing the game he loves and learn some more places to hunt.

After all, he has a PB to beat.