Whatever moved Fred to sell the biggest buck he had ever killed is unclear, but Fred was always a horse trader, and in those days $100 was a lot of money. He accepted the man's offer with one stipulation. If he died before Fred did, then the antlers would be returned to Fred. The hunter took the huge rack home with him (he lived in another state), where he no doubt told people he had killed the deer himself.

At some point in time, the new owner of the Silver Ridge Buck sawed both antlers off the skull plate to which they'd been attached. His motivations for doing so remain a mystery to this day. At the time the deer was killed in 1949, the Boone and Crockett Club had not yet refined its scoring system for whitetail antlers. That was done a few years later during the early 1950s. After the scoring system was updated, a rack with a broken or split skull plate or antlers that had been separated from the skull plate were not eligible for entry into the Boone and Crockett record book.

A number of years went by, and the hunter who had bought the Silver Ridge Buck passed away. When Fred heard about the man's death, he wasted little time in making arrangements to get his Silver Ridge Buck back home to northern Maine. Later, in the mid-1990s, he had the antlers mounted by taxidermist Tad Proudlove. Although the rack could not be entered in the record book, the huge 18-point main-frame 6x6 antlers were scored after 40 years of shrinkage.

The right antler had a gross typical score of 100 3/8 inches. The left antler had a gross typical score of 95 5/8 inches. The right antler had an additional 8 7/8 inches in abnormal tines while the left had 19 1/8 inches in abnormal growth. Fred had the deer mounted with a 24 4/8-inch inside spread (and nearly a 30-inch outside spread).

Without the presence of any non-typical points, the rack of the Silver Ridge Buck would have netted around 210 typical points after deductions. This clearly shows just how enormous the typical portion of the world-class frame actually is. Because of the 28 inches in abnormal points, however, the rack obviously would have been scored as a non-typical, netting in the mid-230s. Certainly Fred's hard-won Silver Ridge Buck is one of Maine's finest ever!

AHEAD OF HIS TIME
By the time you read these words Fred Goodwin will have turned 100 years old. (His birthday was on Jan. 3, 2009.) To those who know him, Fred is an unforgettable character who was far ahead of his time in so many ways. For example, in the late 1940s, Fred hunted with an imported German scope on his rifle (see photo of the Silver Ridge Buck), and he used a pair of binoculars at a time when very few whitetail hunters were using scopes or optics of any kind.

In the early 1950s, he produced and sold a line of deer scents. How many hunters used scents in the 1950s? Fred always went shed hunting in the spring, and he kept meticulous records of his finds. He was very experienced in rattling and calling deer, and he frequently used these methods long before they became popular decades later.

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