Hunting often requires a great deal of patience for a payoff.
One man had almost lost all hope.
And a Florida hunter was watching a football game when he saw this jaw-dropping sight.
Florida hunter waits patiently for a massive whitetail buck
Port St. Joe, Florida resident Jacob Combs leased a piece of property in sparsely populated Calhoun County on the state’s panhandle for deer hunting this year.
A buck he noticed on trail cams on the 400-acre property caught the attention of Combs.
“I knew he was on the property for two months,” Combs told Outdoor Life. “I got trail camera photos of him almost every night.”
Combs was out in his stand almost every day after Halloween when he noticed the buck out in daylight.
“I wasn’t on stand during Halloween because I was with my family,” Combs explained. “I was at a party when I got phone trail cam photos of the buck just 30 yards from my stand during daylight. I was pretty upset about not being there when he showed up.”
The Florida hunter set up a deer feeder, but the buck would never take a bite.
He finally saw the buck in person after nearly a month and it was a massive whitetail.
“That late afternoon, I first saw a doe with fawns and a spike,” Combs recalled. “I had a deer feeder out. But the buck would never go close to it, though the other deer would. They’d stop for a while, take a bite from the feeder, then move along.”
Florida hunter lands massive buck while watching a college football game
Combs was watching the Florida Gators football game in the late afternoon when he finally saw the massive buck near his ladder stand.
“It was still pretty early, so I was watching the Gators game on my phone,” Combs stated. “I looked up, and there he was at 50 yards. It took him two minutes to get to bow range. I never looked at his rack again because I thought I’d get the shakes.”
He patiently waited to get his shot.
“The spike buck was there, and the big buck turned to chase the spike away,” Combs said. “That’s when he turned broadside at 31 yards, and I raised my crossbow and shot.”
Combs sent the buck fleeing down a trail.
“I felt good about the shot, and I thought I heard him fall,” Combs explained. “But there were other deer around running away, too, so I couldn’t be sure about him crashing.”
He returned with his father and grandfather to track what they thought was the wounded buck.
“It was full dark, but we got on the trail using flashlights,” Combs recalled. “The blood got better and better as we followed it. His trail turned into some woods, and we found him about 30 yards inside the timber. He’d been dead a long time because he was very stiff. I don’t think he lived long.”
The 16-point buck weighed 126 pounds.
A Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission official gave the buck a green score of 187 2/8 inches gross and a net of 180 5/8s inches.
“I’m having a pedestal mount made, and we’ll display him in our deer camp when it gets back from the taxidermist,” Combs said. “The state official said that it missed being the Calhoun County record deer by less than one inch.”
Patience and luck paid off for Jacob Combs to land a near-record-setting buck.
DeSantis Daily will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this story.
