On his 23rd sit of the season, Jacob Combs had a first encounter with his target buck — a huge Florida whitetail that measured 187 2/8 inches!
February 14, 2025
By Clifford Neames
“I saw a foodplot on Facebook that looked familiar,” Jacob Combs begins. “And when I checked into it, the property was available for lease.”
That little bit of providence was the beginning of an incredible Florida deer hunt in 2024. Jacob has hunted his home state for many years. It’s not known as a big buck state, so he was just looking for a good place to hunt when he signed the paperwork.
He and his friend, Billy, went in on the lease and the work began — first bushhogging to clear out some places, then planting food plots and putting up trail cameras to see what was around. In an incredible streak of luck, they got a picture of a true hammer the first afternoon after clearing, the biggest deer either of them had ever seen.
The dry year did their foodplots in, but luckily there were some peanut farms nearby, and the drought meant the buck was locked into the water source there. But the pictures dried up, too, as soon as the buck lost velvet. The hunt for this one was going to be tough!
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Jacob sat his first three hunts then figured he was in the wrong spot and changed location, but the big buck was a no show for weeks.
“I hunted every day, until I decided I might be pressuring him too much,” he recalls. “Then, when I took a day off, he daylighted!”
Feeling a little disgruntled but revitalized, Jacob dug in for some more sits, and number 23 finally paid off.
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“I got in my stand about 3:30 PM and began watching the Florida/LSU football game on my phone,” he smileed. “About 4 PM, a spike and four does showed up at the feeder and a few minutes later he was standing in the lane.”
The oversized buck watched the deer for two minutes then worked his way into range, eventually offering a perfect angle for the shot.
“I touched the trigger on the crossbow, and watched the bolt slam into him,” Jacob explained. “Then he whirled and ran out of sight! I tried to text Billy to tell him about it, but the text didn’t go through.”
Under examination, the bolt didn’t show much and there were only a few drops of blood on the ground. Feeling uncertain about the kill, Jacob decided to go back to the camp where his dad, grandad, and a few others got to watch him pace while they ate supper.
After a very uneasy three-hour wait, the big crew returned to look for his buck. The search was short, and Jacob wrapped his hands around 187 2/8 inches of antler a few minutes after they arrived. The 6 1/2-year-old buck weighed 216 pounds.
