Dang, The head on that buck is massive. Do you have an estimate on the weight?
Actually, that's part of the long story; he weighed very little.
I spotted this buck from about 45 yards away, bedded down in a small,
incredibly brushy/thorny thicket; all I could see was a portion of his back legs and his chest. I could tell he was a good sized deer (way too big to be a doe), but I couldn't see his neck or head. I gingerly crept towards him, walking as stealthily as I possibly could. Soon I was approx. 35 yards away, and he stood up... he was standing perfectly broadside giving me a perfect shot at his vitals, but I still couldn't see his head as it was behind some rosebush branches.
To explain why I didn't shoot without ID'ing the size of his rack, we have quite a few bucks on our property, and my personal criteria for targeting a buck is that he exceed (per my best estimation) 145 or so gross B & C points. If they're smaller than that, I really enjoy watching them walk through the woods, and passing on them and giving decent sized 2-1/2 and 3-1/2 year old bucks a chance to make it to full maturity over the past four years has really resulted in our seeing a lot more big bucks while bow hunting.
So, at 35 yards, I couldn't make out his head, but it did seem like his neck angled down. I took a few more slow steps, and when I got to within 30 yards I could make out his left antler (yup, he's a buck) and I could tell that the left side had five points. His head was definitely down, his nose a few inches off ground, and I wondered if he thought he was hidden given that most of his head was behind the rosebush (kind of like a baby playing peek-a-boo). Now in my experience it's pretty unusual being able to walk within 30 yards of a decent buck, but just two hours earlier I'd still hunted (slow stalked) to within 25 - 40 yards of a group of 13 does, and actually sat down indian-style in a small grove of oak trees watching these 13 does eat/prance/play around... two walked within 15 yards of me, looked right at me, but never became alarmed... so I was kind of feeling like I was the master of stealth or something... so with that in mind, I just figured I was conjuring up my primal hunting abilities and was on a Zen level with my quarry...
So I crept further forward... 25 yards... I could now see his left antler and it too had 5 points, and he had approximately a 17" inside spread. Since his head was lowered, looking directly at me, and his tines were pointing straight at me, I couldn't tell how tall his tines were... but my guess was this was a 130 class buck, and not a deer I wanted to take. So I took a few more steps, just to see how close I could get before he bolted away... 20 yards... 17 yards... 14 yards!!! Now this was getting rediculous... how the heck can a knucklehead like me who's NOT really a super-stealthy-Indian-like-stalker sneak up within 14 yards of a decent sized 10 point buck? He was across a 12? foot deep gully, and I was on the other side... perhaps that made him feel safe? In my gut, I knew something was wrong with this deer, he had to be injured or something... perhaps he'd been shot earlier in the day? So I walked to the edge of the gully... I'm now 11? yards away, and this buck is still standing broadside to me, looking right at me with his head down and his antler tines pointing right at me.
So what do I do next??? What every red blooded American deer hunter would do... I, ahhhh... put down my shotgun and grab a big 3" long stick, and throw it as hard as I can towards the deer... it landed three feet short of him, and he still didn't move. At this point, I'm thinking... "Houston, we have a problem." Something was obviously not right with this animal. I take a few steps down the gully, start to climb back up the opposite side, trying to see how close I can actually get to this beast. The opposite side was steep, so I grabbed onto a 4" diameter tree to pull myselt up the opposite side. As my head gets up to ground level, I see him... now 7? yard away... looking at me... I carefully pull myself up, hiding behind the narrow tree, thinking that this thing could literally charge at me and impale me with his antlers... but as I study him, I can see that the deer is
very gaunt. I could see his hip bones bulging through his hind end... his neck was thin, yet it should have been swollen from the rut. His head
was hanging down low, as if he could barely hold his head up. I could tell that this deer was definitely sick, or had been injured weeks or months ago and was literally dying a slow death. At that point I made the decision to put him down, end his misery, and dispatched him. It wasn't fun.
When I walked up to him, I learned the full extent of the situation. This deer's spine was literally sticking up out of his back, there was zero muscle on either side where his loins should have been. I could feel his ribs beneath his coat. His hip bones were protruding out of the sides of his rear end, and his hind end was very bony... this buck was literally nothing but skin and bones. I dragged him back across the creek literally with one hand... I'd estimate he weighed no more than 140? pounds on the hoof... I didn't field dress him... he should have weighted a good 220+ pounds minimum had he been healthy as he had a very large, long frame. So the bottom line is that this deer was either sick or had suffered some other non-apparent injury months before. My immediate concern was that he might have CWD... and that I get him tested to make sure we don't have CWD on our farm (there was a deer found that tested positive for CWD only 10 miles from our property).
So I felt bad for this magnificent creature, who had been reduced to such a shadow of his former self, yet I felt glad that I brought a quick, merciful end to his suffering... very much mixed emotions with this one. I did remove his head, and a biologist from the IL DNR is testing the brain stem to ascertain if indeed the deer might have been suffering from CWD... while this is unlikely, better safe than sorry, we definitely want to make sure that this is not the case.
So... all in all this was a very bittersweet hunt, but I'd like to think I helped the poor guy out. He was (before his injuries/before he got sick/whatever) a magnificent animal.