My farm neighbor has been telling me about this buck as he's seen it a couple of times since muzzleloader (he doesn't bow hunt, but we do). Last Thursday afternoon I watched him at 320yds across an open area (levee'd duckhole) with 15x binos for several minutes. He WAS tempting but being so young and with obvious potential, I knew it had to be the one my neighbor had passed a couple of times, I let him walk as well. These pics are from my neighbors game cam he has on a cornplot (appx 300yds thru the woods from where I saw him).
We both think he's only a 3yr old. By body characteristics and mass of his beams. (He's appx 185# liveweight which is about right. Some of our 3yr olds are that "light" and we've killed four 3yr olds over the years that were 220#. I seriously doubt he's a 2yr old as they typically are 150-170# and rarely score over 110-115.) He has a sticker on his right G-2 but you can't clearly see that on these pics.
If he stays an 8 and just grows stickers nextyear I'm thinkin as a 4yr old he'll be a high 140s-150 buck. (A HELLUVA 8 no doubt!) But hopefully he'll become a 10 or better and then it's KATY BAR THE DOOR from there on out. I've agreed with my neighbor that he'll get a pass from us for the rest of our season BUT we CAN'T really tell our boys and their friends (teens) that they MUST let him walk as that's obviously not fair to them in our opinion.
But man, doesn't he have what you hope for in a classic "trophy to be" sense?
