Teen’s 170-Inch Buck One Of Best Ever From Georgia County

Thirteen-year-old Carly Jane Jordan has downed one of the best bucks ever from Carroll County. The 10-pointer was green-scored at around 170 total inches.

Youth rifle season could not have come at a better time for one Carroll County teenager. Carly Jane Jordan, 13, of Carrolton had just finished softball season and had exactly one week before basketball season began. If she wanted an opportunity to kill a deer this year, youth rifle season was most certainly the best option.

Her father, Dustin Jordan, said a cold front was coming in on Oct. 17, and he knew they needed to be in the woods. With only a couple of days to hunt that week, he said he felt like it was going to be a good chance for deer movement. Doing what any great father would do, he signed her out of school early for a shot at a big buck. But as the evening grew on and only a few small spikes and does had been seen, Dustin said he felt like their timing just wasn’t right.

“I thought we timed it right, but maybe it just wasn’t quite cold enough. I was thinking “maybe it’s tomorrow,” and then he came out by himself,” said Dustin.

It wasn’t the first interaction with this deer for Carly Jane. She’d seen the same buck two years prior on Thanksgiving morning. Dustin said the buck passed through the woods and she had several opportunities for shots, but she was shaking so bad, she just couldn’t get settled in for a shot. A similar scenario occurred this time, but the outcome was much different.

Carly and Dustin were hunting in a Redneck Blind watching over a food plot. The food plot had several shooting lanes cut into it and the buck passed through two before almost getting out of sight.

“I could feel the entire Redneck Blind shaking when we saw the deer. I was shaking, and she was shaking. I tried to calm my breathing to calm Carly Jane, but she was taking a long time to take the shot. The buck had already passed through one shooting lane, and was toward the end of another. He had about two more steps before she would no longer have a shot. Then she pulled the trigger and dropped him a 150 yards with her .243 rifle,” said Dustin.

Carly was wearing Walker’s ear protection with volume control and later told Dustin she’d turned the volume all the way down during the shot because he kept saying, “Shoot him, you need to go ahead and shoot him,” and he was stressing her out.

“She takes a lot longer to shoot than I do, which is probably why she’s a much better shot. I kept telling her to shoot, but it turned out that she knew what she was doing,” said Dustin.

Dustin, a father of 4, said he’d been hunting this same Carroll County family farm since he was a kid, and it’s the biggest deer they’ve ever seen on the place. The buck was rough scored around 170 inches and will likely place in the top 5 deer overall in Carroll County, if not even higher. The buck was Carly Jane’s third deer she’d ever killed and she began hunting when she was 9.

The biggest challenge now will be for Dustin to try to find a buck that big for his other four children. Dustin said his 11-year-old son is already eager to put a buck on the wall next to Carly’s. This will be the first deer his family has entered in the Truck-Buck and the Youth Big-Buck Contest, and it is larger than any buck Dustin has ever killed.

Carroll County Top Bucks Of All-Time