Mike Pettis holds the rack of the 142 2/8 B&C buck he downed last season in Bay County. Photo by Silas Crowley

It is amazing how attitudes change. Three decades ago, most hunters in North Florida used dogs to run deer, and if a young buck with 5-inch antlers came by, it was a dead deer. But times are changing.

For one thing, somebody seems to live in every block of woods, and there are not that many places left where deer dogs can run without upsetting people and elicit calls to the local game warden. You can say that the cause is "urban creep" or people simply wanting to be left alone, but deer dog-hunting is difficult to do in many areas now.

Another important factor is that today's hunter is more informed and educated about deer hunting than were hunters at any other time in history. Regardless of where they are in Florida, most hunting clubs or lease holders today practice some form of quality deer management. As a result, deer taken in the northern tier of Sunshine State counties are the product of intentional deer management.

Let's have a look at the results of some of that management by recounting the stories of some of the top bucks from the 2004-05 season and how the hunters took them. In some cases, the hunters used skill and prowess; in other instances, they just happened to be at the right spot at the right time.

Fortunately, finding out about the largest bucks is made easier by looking at deer added to the Florida Buck Registry this past season. If we use the Boone and Crockett score of 120 as our cutoff, which is a fine trophy anywhere in the country, we see that there were 32 bucks added to the FBR last season from the northern counties alone that scored at or above that mark.

THE LEONARD BUCK
Jay Leonard, a Wakulla County hunter, took top honors among all North Florida hunters by downing a tremendous 10-pointer in Hamilton County that scored 145 1/8 B&C. Leonard's deer will likely rank among the top three or four whitetails taken in the state last season. The story chronicling his buck of a lifetime was carried in detail in the July 2005 edition of Florida Game & Fish. Still, the deer is so impressive it calls for brief recounting of the story here as well.

Leonard's story actually began during the 2003-04 season when Leonard was selected to hunt the tiny 1,425-acre Suwannee Ridge Wildlife and Environmental Area in Hamilton County. Leonard can hunt the Suwannee Ridge area because of the fact that he's paralyzed from the chest down. Ironically, he was injured in September 1990 while bowhunting with a friend in the Aucilla Wildlife Management Area when his tree stand collapsed.

Not one to feel sorry for himself, Leonard could not wait to return to hunting in the fall of 1990 after finishing a stint at a rehabilitation facility. He is one of a small group of hunters classified as mobility impaired who can apply to hunt a number of quality hunts across North Florida. Suwannee Ridge hosts one of those hunts.

It was on the Suwannee Ridge area during the 2003-04 season that Leonard missed two shots at what would have been his third buck of the season, but that third deer had a phenomenal rack and was bigger than any deer he had ever seen. That same day he zeroed in his rifle and went back into the same area the following morning. He could not believe his luck when the same trophy buck came trotting by. He took aim, fired twice and watched in disbelief as the buck trotted off into a bottom. He fired all the misses using a brand new rifle and scope, but after those four shots he figured out the problem was not the rifle, but a cheap scope that refused to stay zeroed.