The Jack Jones Lumpkin County Buck

Opening day of archery season often presents a contradiction to southern bowhunters. We spend months practicing, scouting, placing stands, and getting ready. Anticipation is high, and we canʼt wait to get in the woods. Then, when we finally get to hunt in mid-September, we find that the heat is almost suffocating, and the bugs are a constant annoyance. To make matters worse, we see little daytime deer movement. As a result, opening day is often uneventful and disappointing.     

If youʼve ever been faced with this situation in the past, take heart! For the past two seasons in a row, one avid Georgia hunter has scored on an exceptional buck on opening day. For 27-year-old Jack Jones, of Dahlonega, the last couple of opening days have been anything but uneventful. Last season, Jack arrowed the largest bow-buck taken in the entire state! Whatʼs more, he did it in an area not usually associated with giant bucks.

Jack Jones with the Lumpkin County 12-pointer he arrowed just before dark on opening day last season. Jack’s buck netted 149 6/8 Pope & Young inches and is one of the best ever taken in Lumpkin County. Jack easily won Week 1 of last year’s Truck-Buck contest.

Jack was born and raised near Dahlonega. He grew up hunting and fishing in north Georgia with his father and brother. Over the years, heʼs taken a number of good bucks in Lumpkin County. Jack started bowhunting about 10 years ago. 

During the ʼ99 season, Jack arrowed a beautiful main-framed 5×5 that later scored 124 6/8 P&Y points, narrowly missing the record book. Jack entered the GON contest that year, but he struck out there as well when a larger buck won the week. 

If there was any disappointment at all in the narrow misses for that ʼ99 buck, Jack certainly made up for it the following year. Ironically, both opening-day hunts were amazingly similar. 

“In ʼ99, I went hunting that morning in an area where I had seen a lot of deer activity, and I sat in my stand for a while,” Jack says. “I saw a couple of does and a spike, but nothing to get excited about. About mid-morning, I decided to climb down and do some looking around. I was looking for horned trees, well-used trails, feeding activity, and anything else that might indicate a good place to hunt. That year, the acorns were falling really good. I walked up through a hardwood bottom, and I found a lot of fresh feeding sign near some oak trees where the acorns were literally falling like rain drops. The trails were worn out, and I found a good horned tree. I had a little Bobcat climbing tree stand, and I started looking for a suitable tree to climb.” 

About 7 p.m. that evening, Jackʼs scouting paid off. 

“It was about an hour before dark,” Jack remembers. “A nice buck came walking through the hardwoods right under my stand. It was an easy shot, and I ended up with the largest buck I had ever killed with a bow.” 

Opening day of the 2000 archery season followed much the same pattern. Jack hunted early in the morning in the same general area where he had killed his buck the year before. However, he quickly noticed a major change in the woods from the previous season. As things turned out, this noticeable change would have a decided impact on the outcome of his hunt. Unlike the year before, the acorn crop in 2000 was extremely sparse. 

Jack stayed in his stand until shortly before lunchtime. Then, because he couldnʼt find much fresh feeding sign in the woods, he decided to check out several small food plots he had planted in clover several months earlier. 

“Around 11:30 a.m. or so, I went down to one food plot in particular and sat down and watched from some distance away just to see if I could see any activity,” Jack says. “I saw several deer in the food plot — a doe and two small bucks. About an hour later, I saw a deer go by that I thought was a big 6-pointer. I couldnʼt tell for sure, though, because he was moving through some thick brush. Looking back, it might have been the same buck that I ended up shooting because I never really got a good look at his entire rack. Anyway, I decided to hunt there that afternoon, and I set up my treestand closer to the food plot. When I got home for lunch, my brother Joe called and wanted me to come down to his house to look at a 150-class buck that had been killed that morning over at Foggy Bottom Refuge.” 

Joe Anderson, Jackʼs brother, is also an avid whitetail hunter. In 1995, Joe and several partners decided to build a high fence around a 700-acre tract of prime land fronting on the Etowah River in the southern tip of Lumpkin County. For the last few seasons, Joe has sold a limited number of hunts during both archery and rifle season. The results have been impressive to say the least. The land has produced several 150- to 160-class bucks. Last year on opening day, David Grogan of Cumming arrowed a beautiful buck that grossed 147 P&Y points.  

“Joe wanted to show me David Groganʼs buck that morning,” Jack continued. “When I finally got down to Joeʼs house, David had already left to go home. I told my brother about what I had seen that morning over on the property where I had been hunting. Since Joeʼs hunter at Foggy Bottom had tagged out, Joe was free for the afternoon. He offered to grab a lock-on and a video camera and go sit with me over the food plot that afternoon. Little did we know what was going to take place!

“We got in the woods around 4 p.m.,” Jack remembers. “Joe placed his lock-on just above me in the same tree and we sat there until it was almost dark. We saw a little spike and the same 4-pointer I had seen earlier. It was just beginning to get dark when the big one came out. When he came out and started walking across the food plot, I knew he was a shooter, but for some reason, I never realized just how big he was. The minute I saw him, though, I immediately drew back and got ready to shoot.”    

Jack knew what a trophy buck looked like. He had several good bucks hanging on the wall at home. He also knew that Lumpkin County was fully capable of producing a monster buck. In 1994, Steve Abercrombie, his uncle, killed an exceptional buck with a rifle in the same general area where he was now hunting. Steveʼs buck scored 153 3/8 typical points and today ranks No. 2 in the county. Prior to killing the big buck, Jackʼs dad Clem had found a large set of shed antlers that belonged to Steveʼs deer. The shed rack, a main-framed 5×5, had extremely good mass and tine length. It scored around 145 B&C points. Jack later had the sheds mounted. Today they hang proudly in his home with his other trophies. 

“When I first saw Steveʼs deer, I thought ʻMan, how can something that large even walk through the woods,” Jack remembers. “He was huge! When I saw my deer, I said to myself, “Thatʼs a nice buck. Iʼll take it. Then I started concentrating on the shot. But I never thought of it as being that big or anywhere close to the size of Steveʼs buck.” 

The one big difference in Jackʼs successful hunt from the year before was the time of day. In ʼ99, his buck came by around 7 p.m. when the light was still good. Last year, his buck did not appear until nearly an hour later. By then, it was nearly 8 p.m., and almost too dark to shoot. This may be the reason the buck didnʼt appear to be as large as it actually was. 

This is also a great lesson for all early season bowhunters who have been frustrated by lack of deer movement at this time of year. When itʼs hot and muggy, deer movement is often confined to very early in the morning or very late in the afternoon just before dark. This is especially true of big bucks. That last few minutes before dark is a crucial time. Thatʼs when the big bucks decide to get up and move. But you have to be there and be set up well ahead of time so you do not disturb the woods, and Jack was ready and waiting.  

“When I first saw him, I thought he might still be in velvet because his tines were so long,” Jack says. “But then I started concentrating on the shot and I forgot about his rack. A lot of times, in a situation like this, something bad always happens. Your arrow falls off your string, your treestand squeaks — something. But this time nothing happened. He came walking across the food plot, and he literally walked right beside my tree stand. I came to full draw the minute I saw him, but the way he was walking, I knew I wouldnʼt be able to get off a shot. I didnʼt know what I was going to do.” 

Then, it was almost like divine intervention. A doe that neither Jack nor Joe had seen was standing up in the woods. “She started blowing,” Jack says. “The minute she blew, he stopped dead in his tracks. It was perfect. He was standing in front of a muscadine vine about 30 yards away, but there was one little opening right where his shoulder was. I knew I had to shoot through that little opening.” 

When Jack released his arrow, he could see the bright green color of the arrow nock disappear right behind the buckʼs shoulder blade. “It looked like a (green) flashlight,” Jack says. “Iʼll remember that until the day I die!” 

Jack knew he had made a perfect shot. Like so many other hunters he had watched on dozens of popular hunting videos, he looked up at Joe right after the moment of truth and whispered, “I got him!” Joe had recorded the entire hunt on video tape, and it appearing on the Home Video segment of Episode 77 of GON-TV.  

In two jumps the big buck was out of the food plot and gone. He ran about 50 yards up into the woods before collapsing. By the time Jack and Joe reached the ground, it was almost too dark to see. They walked up to the edge of the food plot and woods and started looking around with small flashlights. 

Jack shined his light over the same log and stump three different times before realizing that the strange looking “stump” was actually a set of huge antlers sticking up over the log. 

“Thatʼs him! Thatʼs him!” Jack yelled. “When we got to him, his rack had done a lot of ʻground growing.ʼ It was huge! I couldnʼt believe how big it was. I felt like thanking the Lord and kissing my brother at the same time!” 

Although Jackʼs Lumpkin County buck carried a fairly small body frame (probably no more than 125 pounds field-dressed), what the deer lacked in body size, he certainly made up for in antlers.

The rocking-chair rack, which carried a total of 12 scorable points, was later officially measured as a main-framed 5×4 with three additional sticker points. With three tines over 10 inches in length and an inside spread of 21 2/8 inches, Jackʼs incredible Lumpkin County buck netted an impressive 149 6/8 typical P&Y points (after subtracting 11 inches in deductions). It stands as Lumpkin Countyʼs best bow buck ever. Jackʼs trophy-of-a-lifetime was later mounted by Carleton Fortner of Dahlonega. 

Joe, who has had a lot of experience aging deer from their jaw bones, believes the buck was probably 4 1/2 years old. “The land where Jack was hunting sees very little hunting pressure,” Joe says. “I think Lumpkin County could produce a lot of bucks like this if they just had a chance to get some age on them. Weʼve seen what can happen at Foggy Bottom if the deer are protected.” 

With bow season only a few days away, will lightning strike three years in a row for Jack Jones? One thing is certain. When opening day of the 2001 archery season arrives, you can bet that Jack will be somewhere in Lumpkin County sitting in his treestand!