No pics, it was in 1960 up Browse Creek in southern Utah, I will never shoot a bigger one. But at that time and place there were many much nicer looking racks taken but few deer were much larger in body.

My friend and I had a wager with a fellow student in High School that whoever shot the smallest deer (measured by outside spread) had to buy the others a milk shake. My friend and I with my dad shot two very large bucks; his rack was a little wider than mine because of a cheater. Mine was a 6X8 and about 31" wide (as I recall), our friends' was just slightly (about 1/2") smaller than mine so he had to buy!

My rack was sort of flat and not nearly as nice looking as the ones in the local hardware store so we didn't think much about it.

The two deer were together and headed for the top of Pine Valley Mountain when we got them. I was using a pre-64 M 70 270 bought earlier in the year. It was used, barrel had been cut to 20" and a different stock put on it and the trigger guard and floor plate had been chrome plated. I was too poor to buy a scope so had a Redfield peep sight on it. My fried was using a used Model 99 Savage in 243 he'd just bought also. My dad used his 760 Remington 270. My friend and I made the final killing shots on the individual deer so we claimed them.

It was all we could do to put them on my friend's horses to pack them out. Skinned, with much of the neck gone they weighed over 170 lbs in the butcher shop.

That was about the last year when large southern Utah bucks were relatively common; so much so that wholly inept, bumbling 16 year old amateurs expected to get a deer with a 30" rack! Oh! the ignorance of youth!

In 1968 I hunted with dad in the same general area and shot a 5 point about 25" wide and that was considered a nice deer for the time but in 1960 it would not have won a milk shake! That was the last year I hunted in southern Utah with grad school demands.


"It is wise, though, to remember above all else: rifle, caliber, scope, and even bullets notwithstanding, the most important feature of successful big game hunting is to put that bullet in the correct place, the first time!" John Jobson