Taylor Drury has been deflating whitetails since she was 12 years old. Last season, the 23-year-old arrowed her biggest ever, an Iowa buck wearing nearly 190 inches of bone.
Taylor might be best known as the social media face of Drury Outdoors, the company her father, Mark, and Uncle Terry founded in the late 1980s. She was hunting the family farm on the fateful day, specifically for a deer the clan called No Name.
“We have five years of pictures of No Name, from when he was 2 ½ to 6 ½ years old,” Taylor told John Phillips, who is writing her story for Rack magazine. “This very elusive buck never walked around during daylight hours. My dad believed we had only a 25 percent chance of taking him.”
Mark set those odds when the whitetail was nocturnal, however. He never factored in the many trail camera photographs they would collect in the run-up to the 2018 season.
After No Name was thrice photographed in late afternoon, the earliest he’d ever mugged for a trail cam, Taylor and her crew set up a stand between two nearby trails. Whichever he chose, if he came at all, would take him past the hunter and her cameraman.
That windless afternoon, only a few hours after hanging stands, she and Drury Outdoors cameraman Wade Robinson climbed the tree. Wade’s brother, Will, was sitting in a ground blind 300 yards away, armed only with a video camera fitted with a powerful zoom lens.
First to arrive at the alfalfa field were a dozen skittish does, which fed toward Taylor. Soon, she saw No Name coming through the timber at 60 yards. She was already standing.
A doe just 10 yards from Taylor’s tree saw her draw, and the deer’s hasty departure alerted all the others.
“I had to move from the right side of my stand to the left to make the shot,” Taylor said. “When the doe spooked, No Name stopped right in my shooting lane, 22 yards away.”
Taylor had taken numerous whitetails in 11 years as a hunter, but none of them got to her the way this one did. The adrenaline surge began the moment she anchored.
No Name covered 70 yards before collapsing in the alfalfa field. Will got footage of his going to ground.
“Right after the shot, I had a difficult time describing what had occurred. When I turned around to Wade, I asked, ‘Did that just really happen?’ To have a deer of that size come right to where I needed him to be was a dream come true,” she said. “I am over the moon.”
Taylor’s career-best whitetail was rough-scored at 185 6/8 inches. It’s a safe bet this one is headed for a TV screen near you.
— Read Recent Blog! How to Kick Off Deer Season: Hunter: Jeff Thieman | The deer tallies 235 2/8 inches on the BTR scale.