Confined in a deer stand dark to dark in mostly subfreezing temps four straight days in mid-November, 1,700-plus miles from home, Leon Minvielle III welcomed the sight of a 10-point buck early on the fifth day of his trip near Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

It was about 9 a.m. Nov. 22, less than an hour after the New Iberian was dropped off at the deer stand in the snow by outfitters from Canadian Trophy Quest, whose owner is from Texarkana, Arkansas, and whose treasurer hails from Delcambre. Minvielle already had had a good look at more quality bucks and does than some deer hunters might see in a season.

“When the 10-point came out, I wasn’t waiting. I’ll take it,” Minvielle said this past week as he recalled the end of a father-son deer hunt for the third time in four years to the area near Saskatoon. “Everybody (the other deer) cleared out and this deer came way out from the back. I said, ‘You made a mistake.’ ”

The 72-year-old lawyer, a partner in the law firm Haik, Minvielle & Grubbs, shouldered his Browning Stainless Stalker 300 Win Mag with a boss at the end to reduce the recoil, looked through the 3x9x50 Leupold scope, liked what he saw and waited, trigger finger at the ready. The buck was facing him at first as it browsed but took a step to the left, opening up a shot at the right front shoulder.

Minvielle squeezed the trigger, the shot rang out and the whitetail deer “fell right there in the open.” The distance was 60 yards.

He was ready to call it a day, which he did. After all, he was deposited in the deer stand four consecutive days at daybreak (approximately 8:23 a.m.) and picked up each day at sunset (approximately 4:50 p.m.) heading into that Friday.

“Yeah, I wasn’t about to stay there all day. When I finished hunting, they came and got me about 9:30,” Minvielle said.

His son, Joey Minvielle, 46, bagged his buck three days earlier, on Tuesday, two days after their arrival north of the border. Joey’s was a heavier 10-point buck.

“I mean, it was a big 10-point. I mean, mine was a 10-point and it wasn’t as big as his,” Minvielle said.

His son, a former Enforcement Division agent with the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, lives in Youngsville and works as the director of the cardiac cath lab at Lafayette General Medical Center. Joey has been an avid outdoorsman.

This was their third trip together to hunt the Saskatchewan region since 2015, Joey’s fourth trip in that span. In all probability, it was the last deer hunting trip there for the elder Minvielle, who downed a 10-pointer in 2015 and a sizeable 10-pointer with two broken brow tines in 2017. That one’s mounted in his office.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I did it three times. It’s really an awesome experience if you want to kill deer. It’s some good hunting up there,” Minvielle said.

How plentiful are the deer in the winter wonderland he hunted in Saskatchewan? Minvielle said he saw beaucoup deer Monday, Tuesday and Thursday but for some reason very few were seen on Wednesday.

“I saw a bunch Friday morning before I shot. I saw six 8-points, a 7-point and a 6-point, and probably 20 does,” he said.

“It’s fun when you have that many deer. Deer were walking right in front of the deer stand, a lot of does. I got a picture of them looking at me.”

Was that his final, positively final, trip to the deer hunting heaven in Saskatchewan?

“I would say probably so. It’s an expensive proposition,” he said, noting a deer hunter could hunt each season at a high-fence ranch in Texas about six years and the approximate total cost would equal the amount of one trip to Canada.

The Minvielles left New Iberia on Nov. 16 and caught a commercial flight from Lafayette to Houston, then to Calgary, Alberta, Canada, then to Saskatoon. The next day they drove to the hunting lodge 20 miles east of Carrot River, Saskatchewan, population 1,000. It boasts an elementary school and high school, grocery store, bar, gas station and fire department, which makes it big enough, Minvielle said with a chuckle.

The hunting lodge sits on the outfitters’ 400,000-acre area located in the “Forest Fringe” region of northeast Saskatchewan, which features rich agricultural crops bordered by vast expanses of uninhabited boreal forest.

As Minvielle spoke about his latest trip, he looked at the pile of papers and such that accumulated on his desk during his absence. For sure, he was a lot warmer than those days outside the hunting lodge.

“The weather was pretty nice. Monday the 18th it got up to 36. Tuesday the 19th to 24. Wednesday the 20th it never got above 13” and so on, he said.

“You really dress for it. They have heaters in the stand, so it’s not too bad. Friday morning it was about 26 when I went out,” he said.

The size of the whitetail deer around him impressed the New Iberia native who graduated from the University of Southwestern Louisiana, then earned his law degree from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at LSU in 1973.

“The deer are so big up there. Every deer is 150 pounds of meat,” he said.

Deer meat harvested by the Minvielles was donated locally. However, the hunting lodge’s manager did keep some and make deer jerky for them.

“It was pretty good,” Minvielle said.

Their deer are being mounted by a Canadian taxidermist who reported Tuesday he had the horns and cape and was ready to start on them.

Minvielle will remember his trophy from, more than likely, his last trip to Canada.