Georgia Booner Surfaces From Jefferson County

A 2020 Boone & Crockett buck from Jefferson County was recently measured and as of now claims status as the best typical-scoring buck from last season.

The 13-pointer, killed on Nov. 21 by Zac Peters, of Wrens, grosses 182 3/8 inches and nets down to 174 6/8, making it the first typical B&C buck that has been scored from last season.

This Jefferson County Booner from the 2020 season nets 174 6/8 inches. The hunter is Zac Peters, 21, of Wrens.

“Where I shot the deer we had done very little hunting in that particular spot,” said Zac. “That was the first morning we had hunted that stand the whole year.”

Zac, 20 at the time and a current employee at Shady Creek Greenhouse in western Jefferson County, was hunting a tower stand on family land that overlooked a clearcut. On the other side of the clearcut, Zac could see into his neighbor’s field, which was about 300 to 350 yards away.

“I saw him a little after 7 with some other deer running in the neighbor’s field,” said Zac. “The buck ended up being with a hot doe, and all I could think was that she was the only reason he was anywhere around there.”

For the next few minutes, all Zac could do was watch the giant buck from the tower stand through binoculars. Sometime between 7:45 to 8, the buck and doe came off the neighbor’s field and into Zac’s clearcut.

“After they left the field, I didn’t see the doe the entire time,” said Zac. “I caught a few glimpses of him from time to time between 250 and 350 yards. He was moving around and about to give me a heart attack. One minute I would see him, and the next I couldn’t find him anywhere.”

The cat-and-mouse scene played out in front of Zac’s stand until about 8:30.

“There were a couple times that I was completely turned around in the stand on my knees trying to get him in my scope!” said Zac. “He just simply never really gave me a shot, and I was nervous about how far he was. I just didn’t ever really feel comfortable about a shot.

“I was talking to dad (on the phone), and we finally decided I should just get out of the stand and try and get a glimpse of him, but every time I would go to get out of the stand another buck would show up. There were a couple of different does in heat that morning. I saw more bucks, although they were smaller, that morning than I’ve seen in a while. They were running. I’ve never seen rut action like that in my life. It was a pretty incredible morning. I know I saw at least four different bucks, but there were probably more than that.”

By 11 a.m., it had been more than two hours since Zac had seen the big buck down below him in the clearcut. He made his move and got down.

“I didn’t know where he was at when I climbed down out of the stand and was worried that he had slipped around behind me somehow,” said Zac. “But I got 10 yards from the stand and saw him standing down there in the same bottom in the clearcut.”

Being too thick for a shot, Zac used the terrain and clearcut cover to ease toward the bottom where the buck was tending the doe. He was able to use some thick cedars from an old home place as a shield to get within about 100 yards of where he saw the buck when he climbed from the tower stand.

“I stepped out from behind those trees, and he was staring straight at me,” said Zac. “If he wasn’t with a doe, I don’t think I would have ever had the opportunity. In fact, I think he saw me that morning. I was in that stand moving around, and from where he was standing the tower stand is pretty well skylined. That’s why I say if it weren’t for that hot doe, I think he would have bolted because he was just staring straight at me.”

Zac put the crosshairs on the buck and sent a round from his 6.5 Creedmor.

“When I shot, he was quartering to me quite a bit,” said Zac. “I hit him high and spined him. He went down.”

At that point, Zac still was pretty clueless about the caliber of deer he had just dropped.

“When I was sitting in the stand, I sent my dad and brother a message that it was a 130- or a 150-inch deer,” said Zac. “I honestly had no idea. I was looking at him through the binoculars, but I had no idea what kind of buck I had on my hands.”

Zac’s dad arrived just a few minutes later.

“When I was walking up on him, that is when I realized how big he was. I had no idea how big this deer was. My dad about had a heart attack, too. I was in tears and completely in shock. Talk about something to make a grown man cry. The biggest thing was that I had no history with him. I had never seen a buck or anything near that in my life. It was so much shock at one time.”

The buck is a main-frame 12-pointer with one small abnormal point.

“The thing that makes him score so much is that he had enough points and had great tine length,” said Zac.

The buck has three tines longer than 10 inches and brow tines that are 7 and 7 5/8 inches. Lots of long tines certainly help get a buck into the 180-plus-inch gross range.

Official B&C measurer I.B Parnell put his hands on the giant on Feb. 1.

“It’s the best Georgia buck I have measured to date,” said I.B. who is a WRD wildlife biologist in the Thomson office.

Zac was kicking himself a little bit because he had been a GON subscriber for years and let his subscription run out. He did take to Facebook to share his good success.

“I was a poor little country boy, and all of a sudden I shot this deer and people know who you are,” said Zac.

Several hunters in the area reached out to share trail-camera photos of the buck with Zac. Those hunters were hunting on places about 1 mile from him.

“It makes no logical sense that a big buck like that was where he was at,” said Zac. “That doe had him there.”

Being raised in Jefferson County, Zac wants to use the buck as a platform to brag on his home county.

“This is just not something that happens in Jefferson County,” said Zac, “but I sincerely believe the hunting is getting better in Jefferson County. I want this story out there just from the standpoint that people can see that it’s paying off what people are doing. I think people are doing their own management stuff here and there, and it just seems like the last couple of years there have been more bigger bucks taken out of Jefferson County. This deer obviously had good genetics, but there’s been an insane amount of clearcut going on in Jefferson County, and I think that is helping out somewhat in that after a couple of years there is pretty good habitat there.”

Zac may get chills when he thinks back to the fact that he nearly didn’t go hunting that morning.

“I was on the verge of not going,” he said. “Seems like things were dying down. You know how it is when you’ve been hunting for a while, and I had even shot a smaller buck the week before.

“I just picked the right morning to be there. I just decided it was rut and that I was going to hunt that stand. It wasn’t like there was a big thought-out process behind it. It was just the right place at the right time, that’s all there is to it. I’d like to say I had a ton of history with him and I had him all figured out where he was and all, but I can’t say that.”

If you hunt in Jefferson County, it’s going to be really hard to break into that top record spot. Zac’s 174 6/8-inch buck beat the old No. 1 buck from Jefferson County, a buck taken in 1988, by exactly 20 inches.

The only other B&C that GON knows about from last season was Colby Johnson’s 18-point that scored 195 3/8-inch non-typical. Colby is a GON subscriber and his buck put him into the Shoot-Out as the winner of Week 8 of the Truck-Buck Contest.

So what is Zac going to do now that he’s 21 years old and has a Georgia B&C under his belt?

“I’m going to retire now,” he joked.

“I’m not ready to do that. I am shifting my sights a little bit. I am going bear hunting to Alaska in June.”

Jefferson County Best Bucks Of All-Time