Sumrall doesn’t miss shot at big buck Jan. 2

Published 6:30 am Sunday, January 20, 2019

To the deer hunter perched in the climbing stand, waiting, nothing, nothing else mattered at the moment he was alone at dawn, despite the approach of a menacing storm.

He was in his element in the woods that morning, soaking it up like he has done every year since he was a boy hunting with his grandfather. One of the grunt calls he blew had the desired effect and lured a deer from far away in the thick brush closer to him.

“I called him out of the woods, with a little grunt, right after daybreak,” Caleb Sumrall of New Iberia said about that memorable morning on Jan. 2.

“It came flying out of the thicket. I had to get his attention one more time. It came flying right to me. I shot him at about 45 yards” with the Carbon Express Maxima arrow released from his BowTech Sanity bow, Sumrall said of the beautiful buck he downed with one shot.

The arrow pierced the deer “right behind the front shoulder.”

“It was a little far forward but it was a good shot, considering thick the brush was,” he said.

The deer ran approximately 80 yards before collapsing, dead.

Sumrall had his first and only deer of the hunting season — unless he kills another one this weekend while deer hunting on property his grandfather, Kenneth Delcambre, owns near Haynesville. He drove up there Friday night and took time to talk about the 215-pound buck that he reckoned would score about 125 on the Boone and Crocket Club scale.

He’s still pumped.

“It felt good. That’s the first one I’ve been able to kill with a bow in five or six years. It was good to be able to connect with one,” he said. “Once you shoot with a bow, that’s how you always want to hunt them. There’s nothing like shooting them with a bow.”

The 31-year-old outdoorsman’s deer hunting season was compressed into a few short months because of his other passion, bass fishing, a sport that he has made his career. His 2018 pro bass fishing season ended a few weeks before his final bid to make a repeat appearance in the Bassmaster Classic came up short on Lake Pickwick near Florence, Alabama, in the B.A.S.S. Nation Championship, the event that cataulpted him into the profession one year earlier. 

A few weeks before that, in mid-October in Ridgewood, Missouri, he made a gutsy charge in the three-day Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Opens Championship tournament on Table Rock Lake in an effort to qualify for the 2019 Bassmaster Classic.

His inaugural Bassmaster Elite Series season began in February 2018. He also fished the Bassmaster Central Opens.

On that drive two nights ago to Haynesville, Sumrall confided he loves being alone on the water as much as he does being alone in the woods hunting deer. He squeezed as much as he could out of the latter in less time than usual.

“I just love being outdoors in general. Being in the woods is similar to being on the water. It’s the solitude of just being outdoors,” he said. 

His deer hunting time included a trip with his daughter, Clélié, a student at Dodson Elementary School who killed the first deer of her deer hunting career during Thanksgiving week on an outing at his grandfather’s place. Clélié, who turned 7 on Dec. 30, shot a 3-point, 120-pound buck.

“Ah, I was on Cloud 9. That’s every dad’s dream to watch their kid kill their first deer,” Sumrall, an all-around outdoorsman who loves to bowhunt for deer, said at the time.

Right after New Year’s Day, he and a hunting buddy headed north for the deer hunting trip that resulted in his kill with a bow and arrow.

“They had a big storm coming through that morning, so we made a quick hunt,” he said.

“I’ve always deer hunted. My grandpa (Delcambre) had me deer hunting at a very early age. I never miss a year. I know this year with fishing I did a lot less hunting,” he said.

Sumrall chose to have a European mount made of the head by taxidermist Chad Segura of Loreauville.

“He does good work,” he said.

After this weekend, he’s got only one thing on his mind, the start of the 2019 Bassmaster Elite Series circuit.

“I’m ready to get back to fishing,” he said.