Jonathon Taylor
Posted By
Chad Lathrop
at
9/23/2009 12:00:00 AM
Jonathon Taylor has been an avid outdoorsman, both hunting and fishing, his whole life. He spent most of his adolescent days with his uncle and grandfather hunting, hiking, fishing and trapping the beautiful hills of Martin County. Jonathon, along with his wife Candy, his 6 year old son, Brady, and 2 year old daughter, Olivia, currently reside and work in southern Indiana. Jonathon is an engineer in supporting the Nation’s Warfighters abroad.
As in the case with a few other hunters, Jonathon’s hunting is done mainly on federal ground and his family’s private farm in southern Indiana - an area that continues to recover from a bout with EHD that hit 2 years ago. EHD killed a large number of the deer herd. However, there are signs that the herd numbers are already back to where they were prior to the EHD outbreak.
The vast majority of the federal land is “big woods”, which does provide a unique set of challenges of its own. Patterning deer in this type of environment challenges even the best of hunters both physically and mentally. There are plenty of previously timbered tracts with old grown up clear cuts and thickets that provide excellent cover for those Hoosier bucks Jonathon will pursue this season.
Jonathon also strives to manage the family farm better in hopes of improving the quality of habitat that is essential in producing the kind of mature whitetails one would expect from southern Indiana.
Jonathon's 2010 Hit List
"Mr. Ten" & "Slate"
Both Mr. Ten(left photo) and Slate(right photo) are new deer to our area as I do not recognize either of them in any pictures from last year. They have been running in a bachelor group with a few other younger bucks. This group has been pretty consistent in traveling from their bedding ground which consists of a long narrow section of hardwoods that we logged 3 years ago, thru our summer food plot and into a cut cornfield. I have a stand set up in a nice little draw that leads from the food plot down to the cornfield. I'm hopping to bag one of these two deer in the early season as they travel their way from cornfield to their bedding area in the early morning hours.
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"Old Monarch"
Monarch is a deer I have been
seeing off and on for the past 3 years. Come opening day of last season, he disappeared only to resurface in February after season was out in one of our corn fields. I've seen Monarch only twice this summer. In each time he was off the inside corner of a small 12 acre corn field and one of our small water containment ponds. I'm really hoping I get a chance to see this deer face to face this season from the tree. He is a very mature 6.5 to 7 year old Main frame 8 point with good mass and very tall tines. He will be a difficult deer to harvest as he seems to have no set pattern to his travels and seems to pop up here and there. Kyle and I will be putting in a late season food plot in close proximity to this retention pond in hopes to lure this bad boy out in the open later in the season.
