We can only hope all Teche Area deer hunters respect the small game, big game and waterfowl they shoot as much or more as a Mississippi deer hunter did Oct. 1.

Chase Borries of Biloxi told his story soon after that episode and it speaks volumes for the degree of ethical hunting he showed that day and night after he put an arrow in a 160-pound deer a few steps away from his concealed area on the ground behind palmettos on public land. He likes the challenge of hunting public land and relishes the challenge of hunting from terra firma.

Borries set up shop, so to speak, on opening day of archery season on public land in the Delta.

“I think I got in the woods at daybreak. I got to my spot about 6:45. I didn’t even take my stand. I hunted on the ground. I had a little hide in some palmettos,” Borries told The Clarion Ledger in a story posted Oct. 9.

He cleared leaves where he wanted to sit. But the palmettos were thick, so he had to stand up to get a good view of the woods.

He was looking in another direction when he heard a sound.

“I turned around and he was six to eight steps from me. All I could see was his body. His head was behind a tree. I didn’t even have my bow in my hand,” Borries said in the story.

It was a big buck, he could tell as he kneeled to pick up his bow. Then he started drawing the bowstring back while the deer was unable to see him.

The buck’s head poked around the tree and the deer hunter, already at half draw, froze as it looked his way. He went to full draw but the deer scoped him a second time, looking him straight in the eyes, he told outdoors writer Brian Broom.

Then a squirrel above the deer hunter started a ruckus that distracted the buck, which looked at the deer hunter one more time as he walked away. Borries knew time was running out and as the buck was quartering he unleashed the arrow.

The deer stumbled on impact, turned and ran. The Mississippian just knew he had hit the deer but was unsure what location of the body.

“I had a bad feeling. I sat there a little bit and started shaking,” he said.

He eventually overcame his nerves and started looking for a blood trail, which was scant.

After walking 150 yards, he gave it up because he didn’t want to spook the buck and make it travel farther.

“I got out of the woods and went back to camp. I felt sick,” he said, noting he contacted a dog handler, Ben Moore of Pass Christian, who happened to be in the area.

Borries and Moore decided to wait until after dark to bring the dogs. At the time, Borries said he had little hope of seeing the deer, which he estimated as a main frame 8-pointer with heavy antlers.

He said, “I had to sit there all day thinking about it. I was crushed.”

Moore and his dogs showed up and got on the scent trail across a few sloughs but stayed on it all the way to an area with thick vegetation.

Borries believed the deer was there. He was right.

Moore told him the dogs found the buck.

“Even before I saw it I got choked up. Sure enough, he was laying there. He was everything I was thinking, plus more. I was hooting and hollering and hugging everybody,” Borries said. “It was just meant to be. To be able to see that deer and put my hands on it was incredible. I would have never thought in a million years I would have killed a deer like that from the ground on Oct. 1 on public land.”

The non-typical, 14-point buck had a gross core of 161 5/8. The main beams measure 25 2/8 and 24 7/8 inches with a 19 2/8-inch inside spread and a base measure of 5 4.8 inches and 5 2/8 inches.

Respect, ethics and perseverance pays off. Remember that.

DON SHOOPMAN is outdoors editor of The Daily Iberian.