Rockingham County hunter bags two trophy bucks

Hunter described it as “the week of a lifetime”

Scott Taylor of Rockingham County beat his personal hunting record twice in the same week with two trophy bucks. He started off with a 130-inch nine pointer on Sept. 18, his biggest deer at the time. Then he killed a 140-inch 10 pointer on Sept.20. It was a good week for sure in the Taylor household. 

“Between Wednesday and Friday, I killed the two biggest bucks ever after 30 years of hunting,” Taylor said. “The week of a lifetime!”

Taylor is a diehard bow hunter and spends a large part of the year looking for ways to get closer outsmarting a trophy buck. This season, he changed his strategy twice that ultimately took him to the skinning shack just two days apart.

For starters, Taylor decided to delay his summer baiting program until Aug. 1. In previous years, he’s always started early in the process. But the deer always seemed to go nocturnal on him when the N.C. bow season began every September. And right after he started baiting in August, he saw the big 10 on camera.

“What drew my attention to this deer was his mass and his white face. I have never seen a deer with a nearly solid white face like this deer. I knew he was an old buck,” he said.

Big buck goes nocturnal

After disappearing for two weeks, the deer showed back up and continued to visit his stand regularly. But then, the buck began his nocturnal habits. Taylor knew he had to do something else to get this deer to show up in the daylight. So, he turned to scent.

“I got some Wild Game Innovations Wild Apple. I have always heard big bucks love apples,” he said.

Taylor wanted to really douse his hunting stand area with this scent bomb. So he mixed the wild apple concentrate with water in a spray bottle. On Wednesday afternoon, he sprayed it all over the trees and bushes up wind of where he believed the buck to be bedding. And that afternoon, the biggest buck of his life, the 130-inch, nine-pointer came right out sniffing the air. Taylor stuck the deer with his arrow.

Bigger buck liked apple scent too

Two days later, Taylor was back in the same ground blind with the apple scent sprayed everywhere. He was ecstatic about his big nine pointer, but still after that trophy 10. And just like the nine pointer two days earlier, the big 10-pointer came trotting along the edge of the cutover with apples on his mind that Friday afternoon. 

“He came out with his nose in the air and tongue out. He was looking for apples hard!”

And at 6:15 p.m., Taylor shot the 10-pointer at 32 yards, breaking his two-day-old personal best in the same place. And while using the same apple-scenting technique.

Taylor’s buck green scored just a little over 140 inches with 23-inch main beams and weighed a whopping 190 pounds. The buck is believed to be six to seven years old.

“Lately, Rockingham County is turning into the Land of the Giants. I am just glad I decided to try the apple scent this year. It drove them crazy,” he said. “Sometimes you have to try something different.” 

Click here to read about Jonathan Phillips’ Pittsboro trophy buck that’s been estimated at 9 1/2-years-old.