Have had two opportunities on freak bucks but could not close the deal.
The first opportunity was on a West TX rock outcropping trying to shoot a crazily palmated buck. A strong wind pushing up the rock face made a steady hold impossible. The wind was so strong that even though I had the sling wrapped it was vibrating like a guitar string. The only opportunity that could get the scope on vitals was a standing freehand shot & even though he was only 80 yards away I couldn’t be sure of a good shot as the barrel kept buffeting upward with the gusts coming up the rocks. He was killed on the neighboring ranch the next week and was a 6x8. The palmated sections between the “tines” were a minimum of 5” tall between the g2 and g5. The rack looked more like a moose than a whitetail.
The second opportunity was a thumper MT whitetail that had a 70+” typical 5 point rack on one side and a double main beamed mess of short tines, stickers and kickers on the other. He’d busted me and pushed a doe off a canola field and down into a deep cedar-choked draw before I had stalked to my planned intercept point. I saw him weaving his way down the canyon wall through the trees but he never offered a clean shot. I lost several nights of sleep over that one!
One of my buddies shot a buck where the horns went down alongside the head and there were 2 little forks below the jaw. He thought it was a doe. We never even thought about saving the head but looking back we probably should have.
This is my son's first deer. I think that it must have been hit by a car earlier that year while the rack was growing. It had several healed up wounds on his neck as if he got beat up by a vehicle.
"Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." Ronald Reagan