KY Hunter Kills Public Land Booner on DIY Hunt

Jacob and Adam Lamar’s 2015 Kentucky do-it-yourself hunt started just like most other DIY trips. The brothers planned the last-minute hunt in late July and decided to find a piece of public land to hunt for the September 5

Jacob was rewarded with this once-in-a-lifetime buck on public land after putting in countless hours of scouting and going the “extra mile” to escape pressure from other hunters.

opening weekend of the season. 

“Its about a 4 ½ hour drive to the area we hunted from our home in northern Alabama,” said Jacob. “We knew we had a lot of work ahead of us to figure out a new piece of public land on short notice, so we made trips to scout the area three weekends in a row.”

The brothers would drive up Fridays after work for the quick weekend scouting sessions, wake up at daylight on Saturday morning and then scout for the entire day. After a long day of boots on the ground scouting, they would study topographic maps in search of travel corridors leading to and from a secluded soybean field, which served as the primary food source in the area.

“As we approached a bean field late one evening, my brother spotted a buck before it stepped into the woods that I could not see from my position,” said Jacob. “He turned around and told me that the deer would probably go in the 170-inch range. Growing up and hunting the northern Alabama area, usually a statement like that is a joke. He wasn’t kidding, though, so we decided to put up a trail camera and leave the area.”

With the hard evidence of spotting the giant buck in the back of their minds, the brothers made the trip back to Kentucky for Saturday, September 5 – opening day of bow season.

“Opening day was very warm with temperatures well into the 90s,” said Jacob. “I only saw a small six-point buck that fed past me into the beans. I decided to grab the camera card and just take a look on the way out.”

 Jacob and Adam checked the card when they got back to camp. It revealed what Adam spotted only a few weeks prior to the season. The buck was always far away from the camera and hard to judge just how big he really was.

“I knew he was big, but didn’t realize just how big he was,” said Jacob. “Being from north Alabama, we don’t see many bucks bigger than 140” and that makes it hard to judge the really big ones.”

On the second day of the season, September 6, Jacob and Adam headed to their stands that both overlooked the same soybean field. The temperature soared into the mid-90s again, but deer eventually began feeding into the destination food source. The sun was starting to dip under the trees, and about a half hour before the end of shooting light, the giant buck stepped out in range. 

Jacob’s giant was not the only buck that the brothers were able to put a tag on. Adam killed this velvet-covered eight pointer only 10 minutes after Jacob killed his buck in the same field!

Jacob settled his pin and made a lethal shot on the buck. Only ten minutes later, Adam killed a 130” eight pointer only a couple hundred yards from Adam’s position on the same field. 

“We had to wait to recover my buck until the next day,” said Lamar. “The temperature was 96 degrees when we finally found him, so we took a few fast pictures and got him cooled off in a cooler as soon as we could.”

At 187 2/8” gross, Jacob’s Kentucky giant is his biggest buck to date, but not his first respectable public land buck. He has also punched tags in Illinois and Alabama
on public land while using the same tactics of studying maps and going the extra mile to avoid hunting pressure.

– Erik Barber