Brandon Taylor was known for his strength.
The self-proclaimed country boy from Washington Parish developed a reputation as a strong, hard-hitting defensive back — first at Franklinton High, where he was named the LSWA Class 4A Defensive Player of the Year, and then as a four-year letterman at LSU.
In his time with the Tigers, Taylor became known as one of the top open-field tacklers in the Southeastern Conference, including memorably stuffing Alabama running back Trent Richardson in the Game of the Century in Tuscaloosa.
His physical and mental strength helped LSU win the 2011 SEC Championship, play in the BCS National Championship Game in New Orleans, and earn him the respect of his teammates as he received the distinction of wearing No. 18 in his final season in college.
So where did that strength come from? Hours in the weight room or staying after practice, hitting the sleds? Even though that didn’t hurt, Taylor’s strength comes from his time in the woods — learning to hunt from his father, Curtis.
“Everybody in the school knew when our daddy killed a deer,” Brandon said. “He would come check us out of school and take us into the woods. We would follow the blood trail and then drag the deer out of the woods with our bare hands. My forearms would get so swollen from dragging the deer. Then he would take us back to school like nothing had happened.”
“It was just a part of our lives,” older brother Curtis said. “It was exciting. We would love to see that vehicle pulling up. It was a fun part of it, and yeah, we got a workout too.”
That time spent in the woods outside of Franklinton helped develop Taylor into a star football player, but as much joy as he received from his gridiron accomplishments, they have always paled in comparison to his love for hunting.
“I am not Brandon if I don’t do that,” Brandon said. “That is part of me. It’s not a sport or a hobby. It’s a part of my DNA and my family’s DNA. If I stop hunting, then I am not Brandon anymore. I wouldn’t know who I am if I stopped that.”
LESSONS LEARNED IN THE WOODS
Taylor, one of nine children to Curtis and Annette, learned how to hunt at an early age from his father, his uncle, and his mother and nearly everyone else in the family. In fact, you would be hard-pressed to find someone in the family who didn’t know how to handle themselves in the woods.
“Everybody in our family hunted but it wasn’t for sport, it was to eat,” Brandon said. “We would load our freezer with deer sausage, ground deer meat and back strap. We weren’t going out there to play around and have fun. I mean, it was fun because it was hunting, but it was also about survival. We had to tag out every year so we could make sure we had enough meat to make it through the year.”
The older Taylor started teaching his children at an early age how to hunt, passing down the knowledge of how to navigate the woods, read coordinates, and find a way out of the woods if they get lost.
“Hunting, fishing, playing baseball, and playing football were always wrapped into one for us,” said older brother Curtis, who was a member of LSU’s 2007 BCS National Championship team. “That is how our dad got us out of the house. It was refreshing for all of us more than anything. We always wanted to be outside.”
It wasn’t long until young Brandon was left alone to hunt.
“I remember the first time I went hunting by myself,” Brandon recalled. “He gave me a 12-gauge shotgun and had me in an old river bottom. He showed me where the deer were coming through and told me what time they would be coming through.”
The first time hunting deer alone was a little scary and educational.
“This eight-point buck blew me out,” Brandon said. “I was scared. He was behind me blowing and stomping at me. I didn’t know what it was. I was just a six-year-old kid leaning up against a tree with a 12-gauge shotgun.”
Brandon added, “My first time wasn’t a success because I didn’t bag the deer, but it was a success because I learned something valuable. My dad put me out there to fail, so I wouldn’t make the same mistake again. He was teaching me that you always have to be prepared when you are out there, because that animal is trying to survive, too. A buck doesn’t get to five or six years old because he is dumb.”
The most important thing their father — a Vietnam veteran — made sure to teach us was to be responsible and mature hunters. The children learned about gun safety, proper cleaning techniques, and the correct way of shooting a gun.
“The big thing our daddy taught us was that the easy part is pulling the trigger,” Brandon said. “The hard part is what happens after you pull the trigger. That is where the man is built.”
It was also important to learn that whatever you may kill, then you must eat, which was a lesson Brandon learned the hard way.
“We had our pellet guns, and we were waiting on the school bus,” Brandon recalled. “There were some robins in the field next to our house. So we went over there and shot like 13 robins. Our daddy made us not get on the bus for school that day. He made us clean every one of those robins, and put the meat in the freezer. He then took us to school.
“He was teaching us that those birds were minding their business,” Brandon added. “He said, ‘They weren’t bothering you. You took it upon yourself to go into the house, grab your pellet gun, and mess with them. You killed them, so you are going to finish the process, and then when you come home, you are going to eat it.'”
He never made that mistake again.”I wouldn’t trade my childhood for nothing in the world,” Brandon added.
It was in the woods in Franklinton that Brandon would bag his first doe at age seven, his first buck — a four-point — at age nine. His passion never waned for hunting, even though his football career may have made it difficult to do so. He may have only been able to go hunting three times while playing football at LSU, usually in between the regular season finale and the bowl game.
During his NFL career, he would come home during the bye week and hunt, but it was also during his pro career and right after it ended that his hunting would be expanded. In addition to hunting staples found in Louisiana like white-tailed deer, squirrel, and rabbit, Brandon morphed into quite the exotic game hunter, taking Axis deer, Red stags, and Oryx.
Even when chasing exotic game he employed the lessons his daddy had taught him growing up. One of those lessons was learning how to clean one’s kill. During a hunt this past year, he noticed the guide in Texas improperly skinning a deer he had taken.
“I showed him there shouldn’t be a piece of meat on these bones,” said Brandon, who has placed his name in a lottery to secure elk tags to hunt in in New Mexico and Colorado. “I ain’t wasting a piece of the deer. I am doing this to feed my family. The horns are nice, but I have never met a chef or cook or the seasoning in the world that makes antlers taste good.”
“Brandon doesn’t do anything halfway,” said LSU Sports Radio Network’s Hunt Palmer, who has worked with Taylor on LSU football pregame and postgame shows for eight years. “He’s 100 percent on everything he does. He was that way on the football field, and he’s like that with his hunting.
Palmer added, “He’ll show me live video from the woods of the deer on the property during our post-game shows. He is always thinking about it. I’ve seen the photos of some of the bucks he’s bagged. I think football has its heart as its core, but hunting is damn close.”
How much does he love it? The week of this year’s LSU-Alabama game, Brandon took that week off to go on a hunting trip outside of Waco, Texas. It was during that trip that he bagged himself a 230-pound trophy deer and killed an Oryx, which he described as the “best meat he has ever tasted.”
“I am a proud country boy to the day I died, and long after that,” Brandon said.
“He is definitely a little country,” laughed fellow LSU teammate and broadcast partner Marlon Favorite. “He and his brothers are like animals in the woods. They can eat and hunt all day and don’t gain any weight.”
MOMENTS TO CHERISH
As Brandon expanded his hunting expertise outside of his hometown, he has had an opportunity to give back to the man who taught him everything he knew about hunting — his father.
Despite raising all of his children to become avid hunters, the patriarch of the Taylor family had never hunted outside of Louisiana. That all changed when Brandon took his father out on a hunting trip to a ranch in Menard, Texas, owned by a close friend and former Texas Tech baseball player, Hunter Redman.
It was during that trip that his father took a 12-point buck with chocolate horns. It was a moment neither man would forget.
“The roles were kind of reversed,” Brandon said. “I was the parent, and he was the little seven-year-old kid. He was grinning ear to ear that trip. It was the first time I ever saw him nervous. He was shaking. It was almost like me teaching him. It was a full circle moment. It was a priceless father-son moment for him and me.”
After he took the buck, his father turn to him and said, “I will never forget this.”
That moment has since become crystallized due to what happened to Brandon’s father. In 2023, he would suffer not one but two strokes, which forced him to be in a wheelchair and limited his speech. That also means no more hunting trips between father and son.
For a little more than a year after that, Brandon stopped hunting. He and his siblings’ time was spent taking care of their parents and the new reality of their lives. Not surprisingly, it was the elder Curtis who pushed his son back into the woods.
“He told me,” Brandon said. “‘You got to get back out there. You’ve got to take care of your family, son.”
Brandon has been doing just that.
Despite keeping busy working on LSU football games and working full-time as a subcontractor manager for a Houston-based industrial construction company that builds and repurposes refineries, he still finds time to spend hours in a deer stand. And now he has extra motivation — passing down his knowledge to his daughter Riyan.
“My daughter is seven years old, and she told me this year that she was ready,” Brandon said. “She said, ‘I am ready to hunt with you.’ I wasn’t going to force her. That way, when I do get her in the woods, there wouldn’t be any talk about how she is cold or tired. You asked to be out here. You’re going to sit quietly and learn.”
“She is going to be a monster,” said Curtis, who likes to remind his brother that he is the better hunter and fisherman. “She is strong like him. She is feisty. I have seen her rep 20 pushups flawlessly. Don’t be surprised to see a photo of her on Facebook having killed a big deer or reeled in a big fish. I promise you it’s going to happen.”
The two went on their first hunting trip together over Thanksgiving, and the trip brought back a flood of memories for the former LSU football star.
“It takes me down memory lane when I was a kid,” Brandon said. “This is what life is about. If something were ever to happen in this world, I know that you won’t starve. You know how to track it, hunt it, clean it, process it, and cook it. You don’t need to go to the grocery store.”
He added, “It is the most American civilized thing we have, to go out there and shoot a deer, clean it, and eat it. That is what my daddy taught me, and that is what I am teaching my daughter.”
