What Jax Armentor saw at a distance Oct. 31 was a mature deer standing in an opening on property between Whiskey Bay and Ramah.

Jax, 6, didn’t see the horns on its head and that was a good thing, according to his maternal grandfather, 57-year-old Scott Neuville of rural Loreauville. Jax never has missed the target on his first four kills, all does, since he started hunting at age 4.

“If he saw the horns, he probably would have missed it. Oh, yeah, he would have got the shakes,” Neuville said Monday evening, the day after his grandson killed the fifth deer of his life.

“That was actually his first buck. He always wanted to kill his first buck. A spike passed last year but he couldn’t get a shot,” Neuville said.

Jax didn’t miss, however, when he shot the 6-point buck with a 7mm-08 Ruger Bolt Action Rifle around 10:30 a.m. that Sunday. It was youth and veterans deer hunting weekend in Area 6.

The buck, which Neuville estimated at 2 ½ years old, weighed approximately 160 pounds.

After he followed a blood trail a few minutes, Neuville found the deer and called the young Loreauville Elementary School student over to the location, gestured to the deer and said, “That’s your deer with the horns.”

The moment belonged to Jax, the son of Zac and Jenna Neuville Armentor, who live in the same neighborhood outside Loreauville as Neuville.

“Oh, he was real excited. He had the biggest smile. … Third year hunting and finally getting his first buck. But he would have been just as excited if it had been a doe,” Neuville said.

“I was just as much excited as him. That’s why I hunt now. That’s what I enjoy, the kids. It just lights them up.”

Neuville and Jax were deer hunting that weekend with young Bennett Borres, the son of Neuville’s oldest daughter, Brynn, and her husband, Brock. Brynn didn’t get into deer hunting but Jenna went on many deer hunts, their father said.

“Yeah, she started hunting with me when she was 9 or 10 years old until she was 14 or 15,” Neuville said about Jenna.

On Sunday, Neuville and his grandsons got on their stand around 7:30 a.m. He said deer in the area tend to move late in the morning, especially early in the season without hunting pressure on them, so there wasn’t so much of a rush to get set up.

They saw three does at about 9:15 a.m. and stayed vigilant until approximately 10:15 a.m.

During that last hour, he said, “We didn’t see anything.”

The deer hunt was at an end and it was time to go back to the camp, so he climbed from the stand to go get the four-wheeler. Just as he reached the ground, he heard four words that stopped him in his tracks.

“The oldest (Bennett) said, ‘Pop, there’s a deer,’ ” Neuville said.

“The hunt was completed, but, good luck. You know how that happens. It just so happened the deer walks out.

“So I climbed back into the stand and handed the rifle to Jax. The deer was standing in the shooting lane, about 120 yards. I was able to hand him the rifle and he was able to set up and shoot.”

Jax’s aim was true with the short-action .270 cartridge. The slug went in above the shoulder and through the lungs.

“Jax had a good shot,” his grandfather said.

He wasn’t surprised.

Despite his tender age, Jax has developed into a marksman. Neuville said every time they go to the camp he gives Jax a .22-caliber rifle with a ’scope to practice shooting at soft drink cans at a 40-yard distance “just to get him accustomed to using a ’scope.”

The young deer hunter plans to get a skull mount of the deer, Neuville said.

There’s a chance Armentor shoots a buck with an even bigger rack when he makes a hunt between Christmas and New Year’s Day at the Comanche Spring Ranch, which has 170 to 200 class deer roaming the property in the Texas Hill Country. Neuville said Jax Armentor’s paternal grandfather, Lloyd Armentor, is friends with the owner, former New Iberia resident Ban Greene.

Neuville’s still intent on an unfulfilled mission to get Bennett a deer in 2021-22. Bennett shot a doe that same weekend Jax got his 6-pointer , the final weekend of October, one that would have been his first deer kill but the three hunters were unable to find it.

“Oh, yeah, the season started off great (with the 6-pointer downed by Jax). Now I have to go every other weekend and get my oldest grandson a deer. He wants one now,” he said.