Strange buck has three drop tines, drop beams, some kind of beams/tines
Trent Pace of Aberdeen saw a peculiar-looking deer last season that got his attention. At the time, it was not a “shooter” buck, which earned the animal a pass on private land in Monroe County.
This year, the buck got no such courtesy.
“I’ve been watching the deer for a while, and last year it was smaller and had an odd rack, like it was long spikes with drop tines off the bases,” said Pace, 22, a student at Mississippi State University.
And, if a spike with drop tines isn’t odd enough.…
“This year, it just blew up into something crazy,” Pace said.
The buck, which he killed on Sunday, Oct. 4, is certainly a weird one.
It has 10 scoreable points, and not a single one is normal — or are they?
There are at least three drop tines, and one of those has what could be another drop-tine sticker. There are no true brow tines, but then again, there are two giant G2s that could be the brow tines. And the bases, well, they have to be seen to be believed. After leaving the head, the two main beams go up and out and they also go down and out. One corkscrews.
It’s either a main-frame 4-pointer or a main-frame 8-pointer.
“I don’t even know how to start scoring it; it’s that crazy,” Pace said. “I did score it myself and came up with 119, which seems kind of low. But it could be a lot more, or it could be a lot less. I’m going have to get an expert to look at it.
“Seriously, I can’t even determine the main beams. The huge drop tines could simply be the main beams or part of the main beams. It’s just weird.”
Making history
Oddly enough, the buck came from property that has never produced a single non-typical buck in known history.
“No sir, not one,” Pace said, and he should know. He has been slinging arrows since he was 4 years old and bowhunting since he was 6 or 7.
The hunt for this particular buck started in late August, when Pace put up his trail cameras to begin assessing this season’s crop of bucks.
“I put them up and left them alone the first week before I went back and got the photos,” he said. “He was all over them, daytime and nighttime. In that area I had three cameras and he was on all of them. He was making a loop, passing each camera every few days, but I was able to identify one area where he was living. I had images of him there every single day.”
Pace chose that area, which was a big oak flat with acorns dropping, to begin his hunt, only to have to audible out of that plan.
“It’s close to our neighbors, who have an easement to get through that area,” he said. “They were disking the field just north of it, and I decided to go home and let the area rest and go back another day. I was walking home when I decided to go to another area to the southwest and get in a stand where I could watch a few deer and not just be sitting around the house.
“This was one of the places I’d gotten pictures of him, but not in that core area where I knew he was living. I had a few photos of him there, but not many. It was a fluke, and I was surprised he was there.”
The perfect spot
The area had one great feature that made it productive.
“It’s a pinch point in a funnel between a cow pasture and a cutover, and there was a small clearing,” he said. “I had cut a few shooting lanes there before the season that would give a shot at one passing through.”
After getting in the stand at 4:30, Pace noticed the wind was right, coming out of the southeast. It eliminated anything coming out of the field to his northwest.
“The only thing I’d seen was two skunks, and I was watching them in a drainage ditch when I heard what sounded like a loud cough behind me, over my left shoulder,” Pace said. “It kind of made me jump; I was startled. I eased my head around and saw the brown body, about 30 yards behind me, over my left shoulder. As he started to move, I saw antlers and I started trying to identify which buck he was. I have pics of about five or six racked bucks, plus some smaller ones, like spikes. Once I got a glimpse of his rack, recognized it immediately and started prepping for the shot.
“He was walking dead south, coming down my left side, broadside but angling away to the left. I grabbed my bow off the hook. I was still sitting down.”
Though the buck was angling away, Pace stayed patient and knew good things would come.
“I wasn’t worried, because the trail he’d always used turns right, and I knew he’d take it,” he said.
A difficult shot
But there was a problem that at the time, Pace didn’t consider.
“This was not a stand I planned to be hunting much so I had not done any brushing on it,” he said. “It was wide open, and I was exposed, and when I turned to get the shot, he spotted me. He froze and stood there a half-minute, at least, bobbing his head up and down trying to make me out. Then, he turned and started walking back. I was still sitting and had to contort to make the shot. He walked through one of my openings and I shot, hitting him high.
“I spined him, and he went straight down. It was on line but just high. I had to put another arrow in him to finish him off quickly so he wouldn’t suffer.”
The recovery was simple, and the results, well, as you can see, they were extremely bizarre.
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