The Scott County sheriff says a routine marijuana eradication flight led them to one of their biggest pot busts in years.

"if you're being proactive like we were today, you can find it out there," said Scott County Sheriff Tony Hampton.

Hampton said a joint operation with the Kentucky State Police led them to a huge marijuana crop.

"We're going to estimate it at probably 220 plants. These have a street value of approximately $2,000 a plant, so it's a pretty significant get today on that," said Sheriff Hampton.

With more than 200 plants, that's nearly half a million dollars in marijuana. Law enforcement agencies do lots of flying around the state this time of year following leads, but they say simply stumbled across this one.

"We were actually flying today being proactive to go out for marijuana eradication. We found this plot fairly quick," said Sheriff Hampton.

They destroyed most of the plants at the scene, but brought a few back with them. They say the plants are maturing earlier than normal this year.

"Everything's green right now, so this probably is bigger than it would have normally been, so we figured it'd be good to go ahead and start looking early this year," said Sheriff Hampton.

The sheriff says they haven't arrested anyone with regard to the bust yet, but it is under investigation.