Ashley Hunter
ECB Publishing, Inc.
On Monday, November 19, a sportsman was sitting out in the woods on a parcel of privately owned property in Jefferson County.
Colin Clyne, an avid outdoorsman who enjoys hunting and fishing, had seen a monster buck appear in front of a deer camera multiple times but had yet to see the buck while he was out in the woods.
The morning of November 19, Clyne had spotted what he believed was the huge whitetail buck, but he didn’t pull the trigger due to not being completely certain that the buck before him was the massive male he was hunting for, as well as the fact that there was a tree limb in the way that would prevent Clyne from making a clean shot.
When Clyne managed to get a clear glimpse of the buck and the spread of the beast’s antlers, it was too late to take a shot. Clyne said he “was kicking” himself for the rest of the morning and hoping that the buck would circle back.
After the morning hunt, Clyne planned to head back to his home in Lakeland, FL., which is approximately an hour south of Orlando, but decided to stay in the area and return to his hunting stand later in the evening.
The decision paid off, as just before sundown, the massive buck reappeared in front of Clyne’s stand.
After firing a shot at the buck, Clyne says that he and his brother began looking for the massive whitetail – but after 30 minutes of searching in the growing darkness, they couldn’t find the buck or the buck’s trail.
“I started wondering if I had pulled my shot or rushed it,” said Clyne.
It was eventually Clyne’s brother, Kyle who located the buck, which had only run about 40 yards from the stand before dropping due to Clyne’s kill-shot.
The massive buck was a success in and of itself, but Clyne would realize just how important the buck was come Wednesday, December 12, when the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) sent an officer out to measure and document the antler rack of Clyne’s big buck.
The buck fell into the typical division (meaning no abnormal or ‘non-typical’ antler growth or shape), that grossed a 158-inch rack and netted a 146.125 final score in the Boone and Crockett Club’s scoring system for North American Big Game (Whitetail division).
Clyne’s buck made it onto the list of a Top Ten Jefferson County typicals.
In the FWC database, Clyne’s buck is rounded down to 146 points, which only brings the buck eight points below Jefferson County’s all-time highest scoring bucks, which is a title that is tied between a buck shot by Cody Thomas in 2005 and a buck shot by Jesse Roberts in 2002; both were given a final score of 154.
While not a Jefferson County resident, Colin Clyne is a native Floridian and has served as an aid to Adam H. Putnam, the former State of Florida Commissioner of Agriculture.
Clyne is currently a Chief Lending Officer for AgAmerica and lives in Lakeland, FL with his wife and daughter.
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