Shattered Dreams

fingerz42 · 11-08-2008, 04:56 PM

Well today started off with a call from a friend telling me and my brother that a HUGE 10 point had been hit just down the road from our house. Our friend said he had cut off the one horn that was left on the deer. The other had busted off from fighting or something. When we arrived at the deers carcass and saw it was a HUGE bodied deer. My brother went and checked the antler that our friend had and when he came back I asked if it was "him." He wasnt sure.

Now lets get some background information. We've been after a certain deer for two years and he's an absolute brute for this area. He's a huge 10 and we figured he'd score around 130. We've had trail camera pictures of him for two years but when the season rolls around he's always AWOL. The last we'd seen him was around August 28th.We've hunted for him almost exclusively for two bow seasons. A friend down the road has his sheds from 3 years ago and another guy has his sheds from last year. We estimate this deer at around 5.5 years old.
Fast forward to today. My brother says he isnt sure if its him or not so I go down and check the antler, and OFCOURSE its our boy. We only had one antler so we took a bunch of trailcam pictures and studied and compared, TRYING to convince ourselves it wasnt him. No matter how hard we tried, there was no denying. It was "Hollywood" or "Rom" as we call him.

So the now that we've come to our senses and realize its him I was a bit curious and decided to score his one antler.

Heres what I came up with:
MB- 23 5/8
G1- 3 5/8
G2- 9
G3- 7 7/8
G4- 3 4/8
H1- 5
H2- 4 3/8
H3- 4 5/8
H4- 4
Spread ( measured to center of head) 10 1/4

Multiply this score by two (saying he's perfectly semetrical, which he wouldnt be, but for sake of a score) and you'll see he scores ~151

For little ol' mckean county and where we live this is just a pig. Here is a picture I took and then made a mirror of the one side to give an idea of how he would have looked with both sides.

To say we're a bit upset is an understatement. Two years of scouting and working for this guy and he gets hit by a car is unreal.

fingerz42 · 11-08-2008, 05:19 PM

Heres a live shot.

fingerz42 · 11-08-2008, 05:24 PM

And his lifeless body within 2 hours of him being killed. Body was still warm and flexible when we were there getting pictures. Just wanted to say this because he does look bloated but thats just because he was such a hoss. (brother in picture to give an aspect of how large he was compared to his hand)
i had to downsize the photo quite a bit to fit onto the board size restrictions.