Upside Down Weirdness From The Taylor County Deer Woods

Jeff Phillips with the half rack that a Taylor County buck left for him after it flipped upside down in front of his 4-wheeler in 2013.

Jeff Phillips, of Cumming,  had a weird occurrence happen to him on his 350-acre hunting club in Taylor County during the 2013-14 hunting season.

“It was in November, and I was down for a rut hunt,” said Jeff. “That morning I killed an 8-point that we had 100 pictures of, and I got him to the processor. I came back and decided I was going to check our back two food plots. It was midday, and everybody was going to take a nap.”

Jeff took his 4-wheeler and checked the plots and was headed back through a fallow field at about 15 mph. As soon as he drove inside the woodline is when his midday outing turned upside down.

“When I got to the edge of the woods, I heard something running beside me. I turned and looked, and 15 feet to my right was a little basket-rack buck that was running in the same direction I was going.

“There is an old fence running beside that road that I don’t think he knew was there. As I slammed on the brakes, he went to cross in front of me. Then I heard a loud metallic bang, and this buck goes flying through the air 10 feet in front of me. As he is upside down, his legs are pumping like he is still running.

“I was just sitting on the 4-wheeler like ‘What in the world just happened?’ He lands in the middle of the road on his back, jumps up and takes off running off.

“I went over there and started looking to see what tripped him up, and I saw a piece of his rack lying there, and the ground was all tore up,” said Jeff.

Apparently the buck’s rack got hung in the fence.

“I picked the rack up and started looking at it and could see the scratches from the fence on the rack. It just snapped it off. I think he didn’t realize the fence was there.

“When his rack got stuck, it swung his butt around, and he went flying. Visualize a deer running as hard as he can go and his head just stops. It flipped him completely 180 degrees.”

You can imagine the tale Jeff had when he got back to camp. Naturally, everyone had to go down and check out the scene.

“Everybody was down there looking, and they were like, ‘I bet his neck hurts.’ I told everybody that if they saw a deer walking around real slow and careful, he needs another year,’” Jeff laughed.