Sarah Van Pietersom hunted the opener of the 2018 Wisconsin gun deer season. “We went out about 2:30 and didn’t see much initially," the Genesee resident told the Journal Sentinel. "Around 4 I saw what I thought was a buck. I pulled out my binoculars to get a closer look and thought to myself it was a decent buck. He dropped with one shot. I didn’t realize at that point it was this big buck."  Giant! The buck was estimated to be around 6 years old, and he looks it in the picture. Sarah said she became interested in hunting by sitting with her fiancé while he hunted when they started dating six years ago. Four years ago, she took a hunter safety course and started hunting on [...]

The typical “unicorn” tine--third beam that sprouts out a buck’s forehead—is 1 to 4 inches long. The middle tine in this picture appears to be 13 inches or longer, likely making it longest unicorn tine ever on a whitetail. Biologists note that a unicorn tine is caused by trauma to the frontal bone on a buck’s forehead. This entire region of the skull is capable of growing antler, and if an area of the frontal bone is injured (such as a tine puncture from another buck) the trauma may cause a third antler to grow from the injury.    How rare is a unicorn buck? Short answer, very. Noted whitetail scientist Mickey Hellickson says that during his days of researching wild whitetails on the [...]