I am professional photographer (www.jeffhuntphotography.com) who lives to hunt the Lowcountry of South Carolina. My wife, Amy, and I live here with our two boys where I also manage Lowcountry Hunting Services, a trophy deer club near the Savannah River in Hampton County.

I intend to continue my blogging about our club’s daily hunting success as well as all Quality Deer Management work done to create a truly amazing Lowcountry hunting plantation. However I also plan to cover as much lowcountry hunting news as possible as well as getting hunting reports from other clubs, doing interviews with knowledgeable local hunters and providing hunting tips crafted for our area. In addition, I hope to reach out to the other outdoor bloggers so that I too can contribute to the preservation and documentation of our real national pastime.

You can also read my full bio below:

I grew up in Orange Park, a suburb just outside of Jacksonville, FL, where I had a nice childhood playing lots of local sports while also hunting a great deal with my dad and family friends in SC(that is me with my first buck, age 9). However my parent’s divorce when I was 12 took a heavy toll on me, and I spent a lot of time in trouble after that (I have probably done more hours of community service than most people have hunted).

I did finally managed to graduate from Orange Park High School in 1989, right on time despite dropping out in the 11th grade, by going back to high school while also taking classes at night. Fortunately, unlike some of my friends, I was able to escape my downward spiral by using my love of music, the outdoors and my mom’s support to get it together. I then immediately moved to Melbourne, FL so that I could surf while attending Brevard Community College. There I had several GREAT teachers that really helped me find myself including Sensei Steve and Kathy Kabboord at the Okinawin Shorin Ryu karate dojo (that is me with Grand Master Nagamine during his trip over from Japan). I spent several years getting my AA (I had a lot to catch up on), surfing and studying karate. I was also VERY in to punk rock and had a spot on WFIT, one of the five top college radio stations in the country at that time. There I took on another persona, the CANNIBAL, and did the hardcore/punk show every Friday night.

After BCC, my heavy involvement in the music scene helped me make the choice to move over to Orlando where I attended the University of Central Florida to study journalism. There I refined my writing skills by interviewing bands for local magazines while I pursued my interest in photography by shooting concerts. I ended up seeing hundreds of live shows (those are my feet heading into the crowd at a Pennywise show in1994) during this period including numerous bands and entertainers that were mega stars along with quite a few locals that went on to be huge such as Larry the Cable Guy (that is him officiating an Orlando bikini contest in 1995) and Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20 (he played in the bar across the street from my house). I also worked as the news and photo editor at the UCF newspaper in addition to freelancing for several publications covering Florida sports teams including the Magic and Marlins.

During college, I also spent every summer traveling to Latin America to catch the unbelievable surf at spots such as Pavones, a wave with a one mile/ 60 second ride (that is me surfing off of the coast of Panama in the picture). And I used the immersion in to the spanish language and culture to help me complete my minor in Latin American Studies at UCF.

After graduation, I took a job at the Sanford Herald covering local news as a reporter and photographer. However was tired of living in a big city and quickly moved back to Melbourne where I went to work for the Vero Beach Press-Journal as a photographer. There, in 1998, I won feature photographer of the year for Florida newspapers with under 100,000 subscribers a day.

Around the same time, my good friend Eric introduced me to a beautiful friend of his named Amy. We have been together now for 11 years and just celebrated our 7th anniversary (we are so perfect for each other that we even went hunting in Alabama for our honeymoon-but that is another post). Interestingly, this was his third major contribution to my life since he had also let me live with him and his new wife when I first moved back as well as changed my career direction by “forcing” me to repay his generosity by shooting my first wedding - his sister’s.

Amazingly, photojournalism coverage of weddings was starting to become very popular, and through referrals, I was able to pick up quite a few jobs. So I quit the paper and worked at a photography store and cleaned carpets with a friend while we built up Jeff Hunt Photography. I also got back in to hunting heavily after meeting my wife. Because while she does not like to kill anything, she loves to go scouting, hiking and camping with me as well as dive! So we would dive during the summer months, if we were not hog hunting out at my friend Drew’s place in Grant, FL. Then we would camp or stay with my grandmother up here while we hunted turkeys in the spring and deer in the fall. And the more we hunted, the more we wanted to incorporate it fully into our lifestyle by living here and running a hunting club as well as writing and photographing the outdoors. We also wanted to one day, start a family in a quiet, rural atmosphere, and we couldn’t think of a better place than the Lowcountry.

So when my grandmother needed help with her care giving four years ago, we moved up and Amy took care of her at night. We also continued to shoot our weddings in Florida on the weekends while we established our photography business up here. Of course we also started the trophy hunt club that I write about so much. And my ultimate goal is to start a magazine that focuses on hunting the lowcountry while I continue to get my work published elsewhere.

However I do love many things outside of hunting, and the biggest would be my family! As you have read here, we have two boys - Bo Hunt who just turned 3 and Will Hunt who is 1.5 years old. We are generally just a wholesome bunch that spends a lot of time outdoors, because there is not a lot to do otherwise. So, everything our family does is related to being outdoors, just like we wanted. If I am not hunting, I am taking pictures of hunting or blogging about hunting. And we are always hiking, scouting, shed hunting, arrowhead hunting, etc.

Again, that is why we moved here. We just have a few neighbors around us, tens of thousands of acres of woods (much of it WMA) and the Savannah River! However we also have several major cities just about an hour away including Hilton Head, Savannah, Beaufort and Charleston. The markets provide plenty of wedding work, and if we wanted to go out, we could. But with two young children, we tend to stay at home a lot. And we don’t mind, because we do get to sit by the fire and socialize with our friends when they are up hunting!

When I am not hunting, shooting pictures or writing, I love to read. I read lots of photography books and hunting books/blogs, but I also love politics, history, philosophy, martial arts, astronomy and physics, so I pick things like the Wall Street Journal, Hawaii by James Mitchner and A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. The only sports I like to watch are Ultimate Fighting and the PBR, Professional Bull Riders.

So there you have it. More about Jeff Hunt than than you probably wanted. But I enjoyed writing it - Because not only is it great to look back to see where you came from and how you got here, but it makes you think about where you are going!

And I think I am going HUNTING. See you in the woods… and thanks for reading