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October 1, 2008

A big buck for the road

taylor%20bucksmall.jpg
One of the final guys to the leave the 68th annual Virginia Big Game Contest was James Taylor, who was busy at the end of the show having his photo taken and accepting congratulations for his Culpepper County 18-pointer that was the highest scoring deer at the show.

Afterwards Taylor loaded his buck in the passenger seat of his compact truck and got ready to drive home.

"It gets some attention," he said of his traveling partner. "A lot of people slow down and look."

Comments

# 1

[October 1, 2008 4:53 PM]

Matt

Mark,

I thought I saw you Sunday at the Show. I believe you were talking with the guy from Roanoke who killed that National Forest monster. I'm assuming an article is soon to follow?

Anyways, I overheard alot of people saying the scores were "average" compared to other years, but this was my first trip so they all looked freakish to me.

I read your previous article where you said it would be tough to judge whether or not last year's record deer kill would have any effect on the size/number of racks that were entered in the competition, but after attending, do you think there was any correlation?

Thanks and keep up the awesome work,
Matt

# 2

[October 2, 2008 9:09 AM]

Mark Taylor

Matt,
I wish you would have come up and said 'Hi.' Would like to meet you in person.

I plan on highlighting a couple of the bucks from the show on tomorrow's outdoor's page in The Roanoke Times.

I actually talked to a couple of hunters who had big Roanoke County bucks, but I won't be doing anything on either.

One thing I've started trying to do is to look into the background of hunters before I highlight their trophies.

In this case just a basic search of court records turned up some red flags. One guy had a minor game-related conviction while the other had some more serious convictions, including spotlighting and shooting from a vehicle, a few years ago.

Of course this doesn't mean the trophies from the show weren't legitimate. We all make mistakes, and there are plenty of people who mess up once and learn their lesson. Maybe it's unfair to hold past transgressions against somebody, but I just want to be extra careful.

If you are curious about court records searching, go to: http://epwsgdp1.courts.state.va.us/gdcourts/caseSearch.do?index=index

Select the county and type in the last name. You have to go county-by-county so it can take a while to do a complete search. Make sure you select "active/inactive" cases, which gives you all recent cases.

Thanks reading, and for taking the time to write the note.

mt


# 3

[October 2, 2008 2:49 PM]

Joey

I let little rack bucks like that walk by, has to be alot bigger than that........
lol, just kidding, those are the kind that can cause buck fever

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About this blog

Mark Taylor holding a fish.

While growing up in rural Southern Oregon, Mark Taylor developed a passion for the outdoors while he and his younger brother tagged along with their father on fishing, hunting and camping adventures.

Graduating from Northwestern University in 1988, Taylor spent four years as an officer in the U.S. Navy based in Norfolk before moving into journalism.

After five years writing about the military for a Norfolk-based publishing company, he became the outdoors editor at The Roanoke Times in 1998. He lives in Roanoke with his wife and twin daughters.

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