T-Bone Collects 160 Inches Of Troup County Bone

Hunting personality Travis “T-Bone” Turner, of Hogansville, is the latest Georgia hunter to knock down a Pope & Young class buck in what is looking to be a stellar year for Georgia archers. Although Travis spends much of his hunting season traveling the country, he cut his teeth in the Georgia woods of Troup County.

“I’ve been hunting this property in Troup County for 20 years,” said Travis.

Travis’ passion for bowhunting led him to open a bow shop called Archery Unlimited in 1994, where he found himself working on archery equipment for the crew at Realtree Outdoors. That partnership evolved into some appearances on their television shows and videos, and things for Travis just exploded from there. By 2007, he found himself so busy in the hunting industry that he sold his bow shop.

Travis “T-Bone” Turner with his 160-class Troup County bow buck.

Today, he is co-host for the Bone Collector and Realtree Roadtrips shows, along with being the national spokesperson for Whitetails Unlimited. So with a schedule like that, how in the world does Travis find time to hunt at home anymore?

“To be honest, I feel like COVID helped kill this deer because I have been at home so much,” said Travis. “My buddy Brian Schmeck, who is basically my farm manager, and I have been working our tails off on food plots, feed, we’ve been studying and putting out trail cameras. This year has allowed me more time at home, and I feel like it got me dialed in more.”

In addition to more time to devote on the farm, Travis does credit his neighbors in helping create what has become a pretty intensively managed area where he hunts in Troup County.

“This buck has been known as a wanderer,” said Travis. “I know he gets around. We have history with him. He is at least 5 1/2 years old, maybe older than that.”

Until Travis slung an arrow at this buck on the afternoon of Sept. 25, he’d never seen him during daylight hours.

“I’ve got pictures of him in daylight, but I’ve never seen him daylight,” said Travis.

In mid September, Travis traveled to Kansas for a bowhunt and ended up killing the biggest buck of his life, a deer that scored 180 7/8 inches. However, as he was busy hunting that giant midwestern buck, he kept getting reminders from home.

“The whole time I am out there, this buck is giving me some pictures right at last light. I am like, ‘I need to capitalize because they are going to be changing their patterns over the next two or three weeks,’” said Travis.

T-Bone’s biggest buck to date, a Kansas giant killed in mid September 2020.

When Travis arrived back home, he and Brian hunted Monday and Tuesday, Sept. 21-22.

“We saw near every deer we had except for him,” said Travis. “We didn’t hunt Wednesday and Thursday because of the rain, and the wind was wrong. Friday the wind was right again, and I thought if they had been slowed down by the rain, he was going to be moving early.”

That Friday, Sept. 25 was Travis’ son Archer’s 15th birthday, which would include a supper celebration out to eat. As it turned out, Archer was hungry early and they went to eat, which still gave Travis time to slip off to his Redneck blind. The stand overlooked a plowed, still unplanted food plot that had a big persimmon in the field that was already dropping fruit, along with some Big & J attractant and corn. Brian was unable to hunt, so Travis had to film the hunt himself. Travis’s gut reaction that deer would be moving early was spot on.

“This deer came out an hour before dark at about 55 yards,” said Travis. “There were already does in the field.”

To help control any scent from drifting down to the plot, Travis only had one window in the blind open where he could shoot from.

“He comes up and gets close,” said Travis. “I am like, ‘Please don’t booger, please don’t booger.’ I realize I have to capitalize on it. He got to within 25 yards and had to take three more steps. He’s in an area I couldn’t shoot, he wasn’t in my window. He stops, turns and walks all the way to the other end of the food plot. There is a water oak acorn dropping, and he’s eating acorns. He’s 70 yards away.”

After a few minutes, the buck makes the decision to stop eating acorns and comes right back toward Travis.

“He comes all the way back up, and I am thinking it’s going to happen, he is fixing to be where I can shoot him. But it’s like he knew it wasn’t right, and he walks back down and eats water oak acorns again. I filmed him for literally 30 minutes.”

As the buck was once again chowing down on water oak acorns, two mature does moved to the corn and started feeding.

“I guess if I am interpreting what a deer is thinking, it’s something like, ‘OK, Sally has her head in there, the coast is clear, nothing gets by Sally,’” said Travis. “The old alpha doe, she dictates the whole evening. It seems like once she is comfortable, everybody else throws caution to the wind then. So he turns and comes, and I know he is coming now. He is comfortable. ‘Sally said this corn pile is OK, so I am coming.’

“He gets up there, and he bumps those two does off. All the trail-camera pictures have told me that is what he’s going to do because he eats alone. When he comes in, everybody else leaves, it’s his corn pile then. He comes in at like 23 yards, and I shoot him. He runs 50 yards, and that’s it.”

The buck left the field, and although Travis didn’t see the buck go down, he thought he heard him crash.

“I filmed it all, and it’s going to be on an episode of Bone Collector,” said Travis.

Since Travis was alone, he needed someone to film the recovery of the buck, so he called Bone Collector Producer Cohen Stone, who lives down in Pine Mountain, to come and film the recovery. It was actually a blessing the deer ran out of sight and required some tracking footage. When Travis returned to the house to wait on Cohen, his son was pumped to go on the recovery as a way to continue celebrating his 15th birthday.

“He is a typical 10, very clean and grosses 160 5/8 inches,” said Travis.

Travis said the buck has about 3 1/2 inches of deductions and should easily be Troup County’s new No. 2 best-ever bow-kill.

As a long-time GON fan, Travis is entering his buck into the Truck-Buck contest.

“If I win a week, I’ll be coming up and shooting for that truck,” he said.

Travis posted on his Facebook page a great message after the kill. Part of that message reads: “Guys I am super blessed and thankful… If you hunt in the Southeast, you know how these big mature bucks are basically vampires and/or unicorns, and for him to come out one hour before dark, I knew this may be my only chance to capitalize… He is by far my biggest Georgia buck with a bow or gun… Plus to top it all off, I killed him on our son Archer’s birthday. We are soooo blessed to get to hunt all over the country in some great places and outfitters, but I can’t tell you how rewarding and gratifying it is to take him in your home state with years of management and sweat equity invested. Again SUPER BLESSED! I love hunting, archery and this industry.”

Y’all keep up our buddy T-Bone on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. You can also visit http://tboneoutdoors.com.

Troup County All-Time Record Bow-Bucks