A Minnesota deer hunter is fairly positive he killed a buck by taking pictures its antler off, however he’s nonetheless scratching his head over the entire thing. What he does know is that the 11-point buck (now a 10-point) dropped in its tracks after three photographs had been fired. There had been no entry or exit wounds on the deer, and no blood trails or bullet holes—only a broken-off left antler and a lacking forehead tine.
“My first thought was that after I shot off its antler, the buck must have passed out and crashed into the ground and broken its back,” says Stacy, who requested for his final identify to be overlooked of this story. But after taking the buck to a recreation processor, he says he’s unsure if that even explains what occurred.
“We think it just died after I hit the antler,” he continues. “The antler actually went farther than the buck did. The deer dropped immediately, and the antler probably went another five feet farther.”
Stacy tells Outdoor Life that he was searching along with his buddy, Tom, late within the day on Nov. 6 after they jumped the buck. The two males had been on a small piece of personal land close to Dexter and so they had been sitting throughout a subject from each other for many of the afternoon. Both had been searching with 12-gauge shotguns.
It was getting near darkish when Stacy climbed down from his stand and walked across the subject to satisfy up with Tom. They’d each seen a buck mattress someplace within the subject that afternoon, and so they figured there was probability they’d bump the buck as they walked again throughout the sector collectively. They had been proper, and when the deer jumped as much as run from about 35 yards, Stacy shot first and missed.
The buck saved operating away from the 2 hunters. When it received to about 45 yards, they every fired one other slug.
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“He shot and I shot almost at the same time—mine was a second later,” Stacy explains. “And then it dropped.”
The two hunters walked proper as much as the buck, which quivered for a second after which lay nonetheless. The very first thing they seen was that its left antler was shot off close to the bottom. It was mendacity on the bottom roughly 5 ft away. They discovered no blood apart from the small quantity that had dripped from its mouth, and so they couldn’t see an entry or exit wound wherever on its physique. After gutting the deer, they seen an enormous hump in its again, and as they drove dwelling with the buck, they replayed the entire scene of their heads. They figured Stacy’s slug should have hit the antler, whereas Tom’s shot should have hit the buck within the backbone, killing it immediately. (Because of the shot angles that they had, Stacy says it might have been robust for Tom to hit the antler.) They hung the deer at the hours of darkness, and each went to mattress assuming Tom had killed the buck.
“The next day we were taking [the buck] in to get processed. We’re loading it up in his truck and I said, ‘Tom, where’s the hole? There’s no hole here,’” Stacy says. “So, he got to looking and feeling—and nothing. I said, ‘Tom, I think this might be my buck and not yours.’”
Still puzzled, they introduced the buck to the processor for a second opinion. The processor skinned the deer and, after taking a better have a look at the hump on its again, he defined that the hump was surrounded by scar tissue and was clearly from a earlier damage. The processor searched and searched, however he was unable to seek out one other wound wherever on the deer, and he concluded that Stacy’s antler shot should have killed the deer on the spot.
While he’s actually not happy with the shot, Stacy says it’s one of many greatest bucks he’s taken off the property during the last 10 years. He plans to make a European mount, however acknowledges that he’ll want some epoxy putty and a little bit of creativity to drag that off.
Kip Adams, chief conservation officer on the National Deer Association, says that whereas he’s by no means heard of such a factor, it’s not out of the realm of prospects for a hunter to kill a buck by taking pictures its antler off. He explains that it might take a critical quantity of trauma for this to occur, and {that a} 12-gauge slug can be extra more likely to trigger this “slam to the head” than a typical rifle bullet.
“The shot probably hit the antler low, close to the pedicle,” Adams says. “It would have to be an incredible amount of trauma, but if something just really rocked that antler base, I guess it’s possible that [the shot] could cause enough trauma to the front of the brain to kill it.”