Jeremy Wynn is passionate about scouting for whitetails, running trail cameras, and spending time in the woods locating big bucks. That passion and dedication has helped go on a big buck hunting run this season.
“If you want to consistently tag big bucks, you’ve got to put in the work year-round – and I love it,” Wynn, from Carbondale, Illinois, tells Outdoor Life. “The 14-point buck I shot on Oct. 12, I had watched for four years before taking him.”
Wynn had known about the buck while hunting on 30 acres of private land in Williamson County, located in extreme southern Illinois. He got the first trail camera photos of the buck in mid-November 2021, and he knew the deer had great potential.
“In Oct. 2022 I spotted him in a bean field and I figured he was a 140-inch buck,” says Wynn, 44, an Illinois law enforcement officer. “After a few encounters and looking at aerial maps I had a pretty good idea where he bedded. This deer was very good at coming out in random spots and heading toward the middle of a field as soon as he appeared. The area [he was in] only allowed for bowhunting, so he was safe once he got out in a field.”
Wynn stopped hunting the buck in 2022 because the deer had several broken tines, according to trail camera images.
In 2023, Wynn found the buck again, and he was a nearly perfect 10-pointer in the 150-inch class.
“I knew he was a smart deer, so I just watched him to pick the right time to hunt him,” says Wynn, who took his first Illinois deer with a bow at age 16. “But in 2023, he was mostly nocturnal. Then in mid-November, he broke off an entire side of his rack from fighting. So, I passed him for another year.”
Photo courtesy of Jeremy Wynn.
For the next eight months, Wynn never saw the buck, nor did he capture any photos of it. He thought perhaps another hunter had killed it. But in September 2024, he got photos of the buck in a standing corn field on his 30-acre hunting property.
“There was a bean field about half a mile from where I was hunting, and I figured that’s where he’d been living for those eight months,” Wynn says.
The last trail cam photo he got of the buck was on Oct. 10. He knew he had to get the buck soon because it was a known fighter and would likely damage its rack again.
Wynn also knew that the buck was likely to head to the middle of the cornfield on his hunting land as soon as the crop was cut and harvested – which would be soon. He had to make a move on the buck.
Conditions were poor for hunting the buck on Oct. 12. But Wynn knew he had to try. That evening, he hunted from a lock-on stand up about 15 feet high in timber near the cornfield.
At 6:15 he spotted a 120-inch 8-pointer in the cornfield with another large deer about 40 yards away. Wynn used binoculars to check the second buck and realized it was the big buck he was targeting. The large buck chased the smaller 8-pointer toward Wynn. The smaller buck turned back into the standing corn, but the bigger buck walked toward Wynn to feed on acorns.
“He stepped into an opening slightly quartered toward me at 18 yards,” he said. “I waited until he moved his front leg forward and released my arrow. I saw my lighted nock go into his rib cage, and I knew that was the last time I would hunt that deer. I watched him run and disappear into the woods.”
Wynn immediately phoned his dad, Bob, and two sons alerting them that he’d shot the buck. Then he climbed down from his stand and went to the place where the buck had stood to look for blood sign.
“But I didn’t see any blood sign in the first twenty yards,” Wynn says. “I could see my nock strobing in the woods, but I backed out. I have lost good deer in the past, and I’ve now learned that waiting is your friend.”
The following morning, he got on the deer’s trail with his oldest son, Jase, age 18. They went to the area where the buck was last seen, and 30 yards into the timber, Wynn’s arrow nock was still flashing.
“I found one speck of blood where the arrow was and nothing else,” says Wynn. “I circled the area and, about 30 yards ahead, found a small pool of blood. My son started meticulously searching. That’s when he looked ahead and saw the deer had only traveled 110 yards from the shot location. He most likely died within seconds of the shot.”
They estimated the buck to be 6.5 years old. It’s a mainframe 10-pointer with 14 scoreable points, green scoring 169 6/8 inches using a “Rackulator” device.
A Second Illinois Buck
But Wynn’s deer season was far from over. He would go on to kill another stud buck on November 1.
He was hunting on public ground near a large lake and had delayed hunting the second buck because of early-season hunting pressure on the public land spot. But in late October he scouted the area and hit pay dirt.
“I found a small clearing with four scrapes in a 15-yard circle,” Wynn says. “It was warm, and I didn’t feel like that was a good evening to scent up that area. So, I backed out of the spot and planned to hunt it the next cold northeast windy day.”
The cool front arrived a few days later, and Jermey used a small johnboat to cross the lake to the four-scrape spot. Using a climbing stand before daylight, he got into bowhunting position.
“At 7:15 a.m. I saw a large-framed deer chase a doe about 60 yards away,” he says. “I grunted a couple times, and the doe came down a hardwood ridge toward me. She was on alert and looking back, trying to elude a buck. She ran in front of me at about 15 yards and trotted off.”
A minute later, Jermey saw a giant buck following the trail the doe had taken.
“He stopped at 20 yards and then turned to come right in front of me,” Wynn says. “The buck continued on the doe’s path, and when he got behind some cover, I drew my bow.”
When the buck was 14 yards away, Wynn released his arrow.
“As the deer ran, I could see blood spray from its side,” he said. “I knew my second buck tag was filled.”
The deer ran toward the lake (where Wynn had his boat) and fell dead nearby. He wrestled the 200-pound-plus buck into his skiff and headed toward a boat ramp and home.
Photo courtesy of Jeremy Wynn.
Using a “Rackulator” again, the nearly perfect 10-point buck measured 165 inches, with six-inch circumference bases and 24-inch main beams. This second Williamson County buck was taken only about three miles from his first 14-point buck in October.
Both Wynn’s bucks are at a taxidermist for mounting and will be displayed in his home.
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“These bucks will make twenty deer over 130 inches that my beloved wife has allowed me and my boys to decorate her [home] walls with,” he says. “They’re all Illinois whitetails.”
