When he pulled into the wild-game supper at Holmes Creek Baptist Church, Bill Mosley and about 200 other folks got the chance to admire the animal and its rack! Adkison knew his deer was exceptional, but he still didn’t really realize how impressive the buck was till some of his friends green-scored the rack in the low 160s.

“When they came up with that score, I thought they had made a mistake,” Adkison recalled.

After two hours of re-telling the story to friends at the church -- and disrupting the wild-game dinner in the process -- he took his buck to a local meat processor. The man came out in his pajamas and boots and hung the deer in the cooler. The processor was so impressed with Adkison’s deer that he even called a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission wildlife biologist about getting the deer officially measured.

A few days later, Sam Graf, an official measurer with the FWCC’s Florida Buck Registry, took all the measurements and submitted the official score sheets. Since the deer was being scored for the FBR and wasn’t going to make the Boone and Crockett Club all-time record book, the rack didn’t have to dry for 60 days as those trophies do.

As the word spread about his deer, Adkison received calls from everywhere, including several taxidermists offering to mount the head for free. One of his friends in New York even called the FWCC, wanting to make sure that someone measured the deer.

Several callers, who might generously be called Doubting Thomases, thought his deer was too large and couldn’t have come from Florida. Adkison only laughs at suggestions that he possibly spirited it across the state line from Alabama or Georgia.

A few days after killing his deer, Adkison heard from a friend who had killed a buck that scored in the low 130s on the other side of Alligator Creek. Both of these deer may have fed in Adkison’s fields, or eyeballed him and the other farm employees as they went about the daily routine of operating a farm where they grow crops and raise cattle.

When it comes to deer from Washington County, Adkison’s buck clearly is in a class by itself. There have been no other 150-class whitetails from the county measured for the FBR. Several have been in the low 140s, including Ray Pigott’s 10-pointer that scored 141 4/8 and Horace Beagle’s 11-pointer that measured 142 5/8.

Adkison’s farm also abuts Jackson County, which has a reputation for yielding some of the biggest deer in Florida.

Just a few miles to the east, in January 1959 the late Henry Brinson killed a 29-point non-typical whitetail while heading to the woods to shoot a few squirrels for supper. His grandson, T.L. Brinson still lives on the old farm and owns the trophy rack. Brinson’s deer has the distinction of being the third largest non-typical whitetail ever killed in Florida.

Closer to Mariana, Tommy Sims made the news on Jan. 22, 1994, with a 15-point non-typical buck that scored 172 B&C. He killed the massive rutting buck within sight of Interstate 10.

Four other typical whitetails scoring in the 150s were killed near Marianna, and within 20 miles or so of Adkison’s property.

These other monstrous bucks included Danny Raines’ 10-pointer that scored 154 3/8; Ramey Gilley’s 14-point measuring 152 1/8; Carl Carter’s 11-pointer that measured 151 5/8; and Robert Jones 12-pointer that scored 150 4/8.

Beyond the fact that they are all outstanding trophy whitetails, the significance of these deer and Adkison’s is that most were killed north of Interstate 10, in an area where agricultural fields dot the landscape.