Hunter gets 332 inches of antler in two days

Gann gets 13-point with drop tine, then a 170-inch 12-point

Chris Gann’s deer season started getting interesting in mid-December, and then got extremely exciting very quickly on Dec. 23.

By Christmas Day, Gan, 32, of Natchez, had gifted himself over 332 inches of gross antler measurements with two trophy bucks in two days.

“It was crazy,” Gann said. “Prior to this season, the biggest buck I’d ever taken was a 125-inch 10-point. Then I killed a 162-inch (gross) 13 point with a drop tine on Dec. 23, and the next day I took a 170-inch (again, gross score) 12 point, within 200 to 300 yards of each other.

Like Gann said, it was crazy.

Sights set on both bucks

Hunting private land in Adams County, the owner of State Line Auto Plex in Woodville knew he had two trophy bucks on the property and was hoping to eventually be in the right place at the right time. He had pictures of both, originally from the same general vicinity.

“I got my first picture of the big 12-point on Oct. 20 and I’d been hunting him ever since,” Gann said. “Funny thing, that buck disappeared right after that, but I was getting hundreds of pictures of the drop-tine buck. He had moved slightly to a new area. I wasn’t having any luck hunting the big 12 so I moved and started hunting the other.

“I had so many pictures of the drop-tine buck, which was the smaller of the two deer, so I pretty much had him patterned. I knew where he was bedding, where he was feeding, which trails he was traveling in the morning and those in the evening, which scrapes he was tending and which rubs he was visiting. I thought I had a better chance to get him than I did the big 12. I figure he moved into the nearby area after getting run out by the bigger buck.”

Gann moved over to the new location, and on Dec. 23, at 5:15 p.m., in the final minutes of legal shooting hours, he saw a big deer with “a lot of antlers” follow a doe into a field.

Gann knew exactly what he was looking at and put the buck down, and then devised a plan to use the dead animal’s remains to help fool the other buck.

The lure

“I cut out his tarsal glands and his bladder, and used the bladder to squirt urine on the glands,” Gann said. “I hung them in two trees about 50 yards and 80 yards from my stand in his area. I was hoping he’d sense the presence of an old rival and that would bring him out.”

Good logic, knowing the deer were entering the final stages of the pre-rut, and establishing and maintaining dominance would work.

Gann added calls from a bleat can and a grunt tube to entice the buck, and on Dec. 24, Christmas Eve, he put his plan into action.

“I was at work at my car lot in Woodville when I got a picture of him at 3 p.m.

“He came out at 5:20 in between the two trees where I’d hung the glands,” Gann said. “He came through all puffed up, like he was looking to kick somebody’s butt. He wasn’t chasing a doe, but he looked like he meant business.”

Instead of finding the rival buck, the deer instead found something much worse, a bullet from Gann’s 308 Remington Model 7 rifle.

The drop-tine buck carried 13 points on an 11-point main frame that had a 17.5-inch inside spread and 5.5-inch bases. It weighed 185 pounds and was aged at 4.5 years.

The 12-point was just that, a main-frame 12, that produced 170 inches on the dot. It is extremely symmetrical except for 5.75- and 6.75-inch bases. The longest tines, the two G2s, were both 11.75 inches. It was 16.5 inches wide and was aged at 5.5 years.

“I still can’t believe it, 332 inches in two days,” Gann said. “I was like ‘Merry Christmas to me.’”