Facing knee surgery, hunter spends last afternoon taking huge buck
When Jason Morrow tells his big-buck story, he uses many of his words thanking his boss for helping him take a 160-inch trophy in Clay County on Dec. 14.
“It was just another work day until my boss, Jason Williams, and I went to lunch,” Morrow said. “He looked at me and said ‘Let’s go to the woods.’ He knew I was having knee surgery the next day, and it was the last time I’d get to hunt this season.”
Not only did his boss suggest the hunt, Williams also offered to take Morrow to his hunting camp.
“So we finished lunch and went back to get my truck and head out,” Morrow said. “At 3 o’clock, I picked him up at his house, and we headed north to his hunting property north of West Point. When we got there, I noticed that I didn’t have my golf cart key, so we pushed it off the trailer so we could get to the four-wheeler that my buddy Matt Bishop owns. He’s my normal hunting buddy, and thank goodness I had his ATV and keys.”
Morrow and Williams loaded up the ATV and headed to the woods, where Morrow called an audible that put him in just the right place at just the right time.
“He dropped me off at the stand I normally go to, but I decided to go to the stand across the creek in some beautiful hardwoods,” he said. “It’s pointed in the opposite direction and I can’t see any of the hardwoods that (his usual) stand is in.”
Morrow climbed down and went to the other stand.
“I settled in the stand about 3:30ish and broke out my new grunt call,” he said. “I grunted with it twice just to make sure it worked, and about 3:50, I saw this buck moving through the hardwoods directly in front of me, but I couldn’t get a shot on him. He was moving to fast, and all I had were small shooting lanes.”
Morrow scanned the lanes, judged the deer’s movement and made a plan.
“I got ready for the only place that I could get a good shot on him to the right of where I was facing,” he said. “When he got there, he slowed down, so I grunted at him and he stopped. I got him in my scope on my new 7 Mag — my first time to hunt with my new rifle — and shot once.
“He did a complete flip, so I knew he was down, but I couldn’t see him with my scope or through my binoculars.”
Morrow immediately sent a text to Williams. It was 3:55.
“I told him I had one down and that I thought he was an OK buck, because at that time I didn’t exactly know that I had just killed a monster, as Dad would later call him,” Morrow said. “So at 4:15, I was still shaking, but I had to see if he was down.
“I got down and eased towards him slowly so I wouldn’t spook him if he was still alive. As I got closer, I saw his white belly and I looked through my scope to see if he was moving. To my surprise, he wasn’t. I still took it slow walking up to him and saw that he was not breathing.”
Morrow was stunned when he saw the antlers, which had a combination of mass, palmation, and a lot of typical and several atypical points.
“Needless to say, that’s not the end of this adventure, because then I had to get him out of the woods and across a creek,” he said. “Jason met me at the creek where we normally cross, but the beavers had dammed it up so much that I had to find another place to cross to Jason and where the deer was. So I jump on the 4-wheeler and find a spot to get across, pick Jason up on the other side and we go to the deer.
“As we pull up, Jason says, “Oh my God, that’s the biggest deer that’s ever been seen or killed out here. He was more excited than I was because I was still in shock.”
The two men took some pictures, loaded the deer up, and Morrow headed back to the creek crossing. He knew it was not going to be easy, and he was right.
“I gave the 1999 Big Bear 350 all it had to get up the hill and we, the deer and I, are doing a wheelie all the way up the bank,” he said. “As we reached the top, we almost flipped backwards. I put all of my weight to the front, and it comes down safely, and by the grace of God we made it back to the truck.”
The buck’s next stop was a taxidermist, where a quick, unofficial measurement produced a gross score of 160 inches. It had an 18½-inch inside spread and 15 points.
“What an amazing day and amazing response from family, friends and my Facebook family,” Morrow said. “I was truly blessed. I want to thank Jason Williams for taking me hunting with him and not being mad at me for killing this amazing buck on his club, and for being my friend, and to Matt Bishop for his amazing 4-wheeler.”
Click here to read other big-buck stories from this season.
