A Kentucky bowhunter recently arrowed a massive non-typical in full velvet after watching the buck develop for three years on private property in the northern part of the state. Jacob Deaton shot the big brow-tined buck during an evening hunt on September 7, but he didn’t recover it until the following morning. According to Deaton’s taxidermist, the buck's green score was just shy of 200 inches.
Deaton tells Field & Stream that he obtained permission to hunt the farm three years ago. He has trail camera photos of the buck dating back to his earliest scouting trips, but its rack didn't blow up until this summer. "That's the first time we saw him in person," Deaton says. "We could see those brow tines from 300 yards away."
"I hunted him hard all last year," Deaton says. "But he never showed up while I was in the stand." Somehow, the deer survived the 2023 gun season and made another appearance on Deaton's trail camera in January 2024.
After Deaton and his friend Jakob Begley spotted the deer in a clover field this July, they guessed that he'd put on another 50 inches of antler growth. So on the afternoon of September 7, 2024—after temps dropped from the low 90s into the high 70s—Deaton set out to hunt the big buck in earnest.
"I figured they’d be moving early in the afternoon with the cool front coming through, so I got up into the stand around 1:30 p.m.," he recalls. "I had a small buck and some does come in around 7:30 p.m., and then the big one showed up and scared them off."
The buck moved through a dense thicket into Deaton's field of view. "At first, I couldn’t see anything but his face and the base of those antlers," he says. "He kept coming until he was about 25 yards from my stand, facing toward me."
Deaton says the big buck shook him up so bad that he couldn't bear to look at the antlers as it moved closer and closer to his stand. But a quick prayer helped calm his nerves, and when it turned broadside, Deaton let an arrow fly.
"I immediately felt like the shot was bad,” he says. “I was sick to my stomach over it, but I backed out and waited overnight to give him some time. It was the longest night of my life."
With daylight on his side the following morning, Deaton found blood and then quickly found the buck piled up near his stand. "I hit him low and to the right, but my broadhead must have nicked his liver," he says. "He didn't run more than 150 yards from my stand."
When Deaton found the deer the next day, he was surprised that its rack was still in full velvet. "I thought for sure that his horns had hardened out when I was looking at him the night before," he says. "I guess I was so focused on his body, and so full of adrenaline, that I didn't even notice the velvet."
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Deaton took the deer to Maggard Taxidermy in McKee, Kentucky where it will be shoulder mounted and displayed on a whiskey barrel. According to taxidermist Rodney Maggard, the green score is just over 199 inches. "It could be the biggest full-velvet whitetail ever taken in Kentucky," Maggard tells F&S. "I'm going to get the mount done for him as soon as possible."
