Buddies Bow-Kill Big Back-to-Back Velvet Bucks

This is Jackson Flair’s largest whitetail to date. The buck grossed 170 6/8. Images courtesy of Jackson Flair

Jackson Flair does most of his deer hunting in suburban areas of Tennessee, and that’s the way he’s hunted for most of his life. But this past July, while visiting family at a 93-acre farm, his focus shifted.

“My family has hunted the property some over the years, but we’ve only ever taken one buck from it,” he explained. “It was a 132-inch 8-pointer. Other than that, most of the decent bucks on the property are pretty average. No bucks have really caught my eye.

“The property consists of a lot of timber,” Flair continued. “It has no agriculture, but just across the road there is a big cornfield. It also has overgrown cattle pastures. Some of the pasture ground is visible from the house, and while I was visiting this summer, I saw a bachelor group of bucks about 200 yards away. I didn’t have optics along, but even from a distance, they looked pretty big.”

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Based on the intel, Flair decided to hang a trail camera on the property, setting it along the path he suspected the bucks were routinely walking. “There are two tree lines that create a V,” he detailed, “and that’s where they were coming out of their bedding area, which is a big hollow. The V is a natural funnel that leads out to the road. I put my camera out on July 13, and the bachelor group cruised by it that same afternoon.”

The trail camera caught the bucks moving through the same day that Flair placed a trail camera in the area.

Flair assessed the data and determined that three of the bucks were mature. One was a huge 8-pointer, about 20 inches wide and massive, likely in the mid-130s. There was a big 10-pointer with long G-2s and heavy mass, flirting with the 150-inch mark. But the one that caught his eye the most was a monster 12-pointer.

“Its rack looked like a ribcage,” Flair said. “The bucks were on the camera most afternoons. Like many summer bucks, they were on a pretty consistent pattern. I eventually hung a stand near the camera right over the trail that they were using. I started getting lots of pictures of does, and they were coming out early and lingering for 20 to 30 minutes. The stand was about 10 yards from where these does were hanging out. Having old, mature does that close for that long can get sketchy, so I moved the stand about 60 yards to the adjacent tree line. The new spot was about 30 to 40 yards from where all of the deer were moving through.”

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When the Tennessee velvet season opened on Aug. 28, the wind was from the north. Flair needed an east wind to hunt the bucks, so he left the spot alone and filmed his buddy, Hunter, instead. That evening, they saw about 30 deer, and Hunter killed a 142-inch 8-pointer. The following afternoon, Flair got the east wind he was after.

Hunter (left) and Jackson are all smiles behind Hunter’s big opening-day buck.

“Hunter and I arrived at my spot around 3 p.m.,” he said. “Because the does were coming out between 3 and 5 p.m., we were running a little bit late. We got settled into the tree and saw nothing until about 6:45, when a little 3-pointer came through. With the lack of movement, I was concerned we had bumped some deer on the way in.”

About 10-15 minutes of legal shooting light remained when Hunter pointed out a buck to Flair. “It was the big 8-pointer,” Flair explained. “I thought about shooting it, but I knew the big 10-pointer and 12-pointer were probably coming. Sure enough, the 10-pointer appeared about 30 seconds later, walking in a line behind the eight. Both bucks looked much larger than in the trail camera pictures. It was the second day of the velvet season, and I had never killed a velvet buck before, so I was really considering shooting the 10-pointer.”

Jackson Flair normally hunts urban settings, but this outstanding buck came from a rural family property.

But Flair decided to hold off, and he soon noticed the big 12-pointer about 20 yards behind the 10. The deer was about 50 yards away. “I wasn’t comfortable with that shot in low lighting,” he said. “But suddenly, the buck spun and walked directly toward our tree line. It had to be God. He stopped at 33 yards and quartering away. I held on his last rib and released. The hit looked perfect, and he ran only about 40 yards and piled up. It was a magical moment. When you stop and think about it, there just aren’t that many deer this big running around out there. They’re hard to come by. It was awesome to have the opportunity to kill one.”

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The buck is Flair’s largest and his first velvet buck. The rack would’ve had a 12-point mainframe, but lacked a G-5 on the right antler. As it was, that antler made up for it with a deep split G-3, adding the 12th scorable point. The rack is only 15 inches wide but still grossed 170 6/8 inches. Click here to watch Flair’s hunt.