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<\/p>\nJordan Taylor of Jacksonville and his stepfather, George Sitgreaves, have had a 100-acre lease in Northeast Florida for four years. Taylor prefers to stay out of the lease until he’s ready to hunt it, so as not to spook deer.<\/p>\n
He knows the area well from years of hunting there. And on the morning of Sept. 20, the 35-year-old electrician crept into a strip of woods where, in prior years, big bucks were taken.<\/p>\n
“I don’t use a flashlight because it can spook deer and our bucks are jittery,” Taylor tells Outdoor Life. “That’s why I slip in to hunt just as day is breaking and I can find my way to a spot I want to hunt.”<\/p>\n
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Photo courtesy Jordan Taylor<\/p>\n
He noticed several active scrapes and rubs as he headed for a cypress tree where he could get up high in a climbing stand. The hardwoods are only 40 yards wide and connect a swamp and a creek. It makes for the perfect deer travel corridor \u2014 and an ideal bowhunting spot.<\/p>\n
Taylor climbed 14 feet up the cypress and saw his first deer, a spike, at 7:23 a.m. Next, he saw an 8-point buck that rubbed a nearby tree and stayed in the area for a couple minutes.<\/p>\n
“The eight-pointer passed by my stand at seven yards, and eventually moved off,” he says. “That’s when I blew on my grunt tube a few times but didn’t get any response.”<\/p>\n
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Photo courtesy Jordan Taylor<\/p>\n
Nearly an hour later he heard a deer blowing in the distance. Taylor noted the wind, which was ideal, and knew the whitetail hadn’t caught his scent.<\/p>\n
“That’s when I made a short grunt call again, and a deer responded with a deep growl. Fifteen minutes later a heavy buck came along the same trail the spike had walked. I didn’t see the deer more than five seconds from the time I spotted him until I shot him.”<\/p>\n
When the buck was at 14 yards, Taylor released an arrow.<\/p>\n
Taylor watched as the deer ran barely 30 yards and fell dead.<\/p>\n
“I’ve shot a lot of deer with that [15-year-old] bow in a lot of different places, and it works just fine for me,” he says.<\/p>\n
Taylor made a video of himself recovering the buck, which he saw fall in tall grass. The video shows the hyperventilating excitement of the hunt.<\/p>\n
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Photo courtesy Jordan Taylor<\/p>\n
Taylor has not had the buck officially scored. But the deer’s heavy-beamed and dark-colored rack has 17 total points and 14 scorable points. He estimates it’s 4.5 years old, and it weighed 160 pounds.<\/p>\n
“I don’t have cameras on the property, and we don’t feed corn, but I knew the deer was around from photos a friend had on his hunting land one mile away from our place.”<\/p>\n
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Photo courtesy Jordan Taylor<\/p>\n
In many regions of the country, Taylor’s buck is a nice one that any hunter would be happy to kill. But a free-ranging deer of such size and age in Florida’s palmetto scrub country is a giant among giants. Many hunters twice as old as Taylor rarely if ever see a buck of such quality.<\/p>\n