In Perry County, Ohio, Ethan Featheroff arrowed a 20-point giant that scored 220 7/8”. In Logan County, West Virginia, Donny Baisden scouted, hunted and shot the awesome unicorn buck that taped out at 182 5/8. The 20-year trend of hunters shooting monster non-typical whitetails continues, and many more giants will fall in 2023. Here are 3 reasons bucks grow such huge, gaudy racks. Injury: Biologists have long known that trauma to a buck’s skull plate or velvet antlers or a major bodily injury (i.e., a broken leg) can cause a rack to grow crazily during the current antler cycle or even for several years thereafter. Injury probably accounts for the most freakish racks, like a “cactus buck.” If deer tries to jump a wire [...]

My friend Wren from down in Texas sent me this photo and said, “Looks like we have another unicorn buck on the ranch!” Look close in the middle of the deer’s forehead and you’ll see it. You might ask, “Is possible a tine can grow out the middle of a buck’s forehead like that? How rare is it?” Yes, tines can grow in weird places. Mickey Hellickson, one of the top whitetail scientists in the world with a lot of experience in Texas, says: It is caused by trauma to the frontal bone. 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 [...]

By now you’ve probably seen the video of a whitetail doe eating and inhaling lengthwise a 2-foot-long snake. The video, taken by Trey Reinhart with his phone while driving along a road in Texas, has gone viral on Twitter with more than 18 million views. Wait, aren’t deer herbivore? Plant-eaters? Yes, and while it’s rare, a deer will sometimes eat animals or animal matter that it runs across. Most documented cases of carnivorous meals have been deer eating the eggs from a bird’s ground nest. Deer have also been know to eat tiny songbird chicks. A few years back, a photo of a deer standing in a creek with a fish in its mouth went viral. I read where some [...]