On Nov. 10, 15-year-old Parker Laleman was ready to go deer hunting on his grandfather’s 900-acre farm in Southwest Minnesota. It was warm and sunny out with a mild wind, and he planned to spend the afternoon with his grandpa in a ground blind. There was just one problem.
“He fell asleep while watching the Vikings game,” says Laleman, a high-school sophomore from Rock Rapids, Iowa. “So, I decided to head out alone to hunt for a deer we called Unicorn.”
Laleman, along with his younger brother, Cole, and his father, Tim, had been visiting his grandpa on the farm, which lies about a 90-minute drive from their home in Iowa. They were also there to deer hunt, and the previous day, 12-year-old Cole shot his first buck while sitting with their dad in a ground blind.
“Cole’s buck was the one I was hoping for,” says Laleman. “But we had trail camera photos of the bigger ‘Unicorn’ buck, so I was after him instead.”
Laleman was toting a 20-gauge Mossberg pump with rifled slugs when he got into the ground blind about 3 p.m. It was in a secluded spot that overlooked a food plot near a creek and a milo field.
He’d only been in the blind for about 30 minutes when a spotted a doe feeding nearby. The 15-year-old hadn’t hunted during the rut before, so he didn’t think about whether a buck might be tracking the doe. It was also just his second time hunting solo, and he was surprised to see his target buck walk into range.
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Laleman sat quietly in the blind and 30 minutes later spotted a doe feeding nearby. He’d never hunted the deer rut previously and was unaware that a buck may be tracking the doe standing in front of his blind.
“I looked up and there was Unicorn just 25 yards away walking toward the doe. I think the buck was bedded in a nearby creek bottom,” Laleman says. “I got a good rest with my shotgun, aimed, and fired. The buck was walking when I shot, so I hit him a little far back.”
Laleman watched his target buck walk away after the shot. Hunched over, it covered about 60 yards before it disappeared in some tall grass. Laleman then got out of the blind and headed straight toward the buck.
“I got about 25 yards from him, because the wind was good and he didn’t know I was there,” Laleman explains. “Unicorn stood there a couple of minutes and I could have taken another shot, which I should have. But then he headed off into a CRP field. So, I went back to my blind and called grandpa.”
At 4 p.m. his grandpa showed up with an ATV. They found a trail leading to a deer bed about 200 yards away and it was full of blood. But the deer had spooked (likely from the sound of the ATV, Laleman thinks).
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While tracking the deer, they encountered another hunter on a neighboring farm. The hunter had seen Unicorn after the shot, and he said the buck had headed into a timbered area near a creek. Laleman and his grandpa decided to leave and return the following morning to continue tracking.
Laleman skipped school that next day so he could take up Unicorn’s track at 8 a.m. alongside his grandpa. It was cold and windy, and the sparse blood trail was difficult to follow. But the sign eventually led them to a game trail with deer tracks, which they followed down to a creek.
“We thought the buck crossed the creek near an old homestead,” Laleman explains. “We were looking across the creek and deciding what to do, when my grandpa spotted the dead buck under a big tree laying in the creek shallows.”
In all it took them two hours of tracking to locate Unicorn, which was still in prime shape thanks to the cold temperatures. They noticed that Laleman’s slug had hit the buck a little too far back, passing through the liver and part of a lung. In hindsight, Laleman thinks that if he wouldn’t have jumped the deer from its bed just 200 yards from the blind, it probably would have died there, and the tracking job would have been much shorter.
Laleman and his grandpa used a tractor to get the buck out of the creek bed. Unicorn’s unique rack was given a green score of 156 1/8 inches. Its most prominent feature is the third antler, which looks like an extra brow tine and juts out from his forehead. They’re planning to get a European mount made and hang it in Laleman’s room in his grandpa’s house.
“Grandpa says I shot his buck,” Laleman laughs. “So I guess Unicorn will hang in his house, on the farm where grandpa was born and raised.”
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