Hunter: Jaxon Elzey
Points: 10 (5L, 5R)
County: Forsyth
Season: 2016-2017
Hunt Story
My first deer ever. My dad and I have been following the different deer moving through our family land through our trail camera. We first found several spikes, 4-pointers and couple 6-pointers. Then we saw a nice basket 8-pointer. We named him Bubba. We thought the whole time that he was the dominate, but we were wrong. One day on camera we saw Goliath! This massive 10-pointer. My thoughts directly went to how awesome it would be to kill this beast for my first deer ever. We hunted every weekend and days off school, passing on does and small bucks waiting for the right buck. Today it happened. We hunted the morning hunt and only saw squirrels. Bummed due to the coldest day of year so far and hoped this was the day. Got out of stand and grabbed the SD Card to view what showed up this week on camera. Goliath was there Tuesday afternoon at 5:45 p.m. and repeat on Thursday. My hopes grew tremendously. Had baseball workout at 1:00-3:30. Got home around 4:15 and was thinking it was too late to get in the woods. Dad convinced me to go out, so off we went. Got in the stand at 4:45 and settled in. Dad bought me a new grunt call, so I was curious about how good it would work. Hit the grunt two times at 5:15 area and waited. Turned to my right and saw, for the first time in person, the biggest beast ever....Goliath. We've only seen him on camera and didn't truly know exactly how big he really was until now. He was roughly 45 yards away when I first caught him moving in toward me. My heart started pounding. Pounding so much that I dropped my glove from my hands to the ground. Apparently, Goliath was so focused on looking for the doe, that the glove hitting the ground from 15 feet up didn't even phase him. I thought then that he would bolt and my shot would be gone, but luckily it was my time to finally get my buck. He grunted a couple times and moved closer to me. Meanwhile, I'm getting my dad's Marlin 35 (which was the same gun he killed his first deer with 29 years ago) in place and ready to fire. Finally Goliath moved around a large tree, within 20 yards, and broad side. He was too close for scope, so I went to the iron sights. I focused on where I wanted to hit him, cause if I looked at his horns again, I would've shot him in the head out of excitement of how massive his rack was. So front shoulder was my target. I took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger at 5:29 p.m. As soon as the shot was fired, Goliath rose up on his hind feet and then dropped to the ground. All of hours and times in the woods for the past 3 seasons finally paid off. The largest deer my dad and I have ever seen in person was just killed by me. After the shot, I texted my dad and said: I just killed Goliath! His response was: Seriously!? Then he called me and shared the excitement with him. He advised me to just sit and gather my thoughts and let everything settle down before we get out of the stand. Hour later I climbed quietly down and went to Mamaw and Papaw's house. Once my dad and his good friend Shooter got there, we went to gather my deer from the woods.
