Upon discovering that the buck had suffered a cracked skull plate and a gouged-out eye, the author realized that the deer’s true antler spread was far less than it had appeared. Photo by Ron Sinfelt.

The afternoon watch was slow until the light started to fade. Then, far below us, we spotted a doe easing toward the field edge. And behind her, standing in the timber, was a buck -- a very wide buck.

From the rear, his sweeping rack looked like a radar screen. Within moments Ron was on the deer, and I was creeping the cross hairs of my 3-9X Swarovski scope onto the animal.

At the shot, the buck just looked around; apparently the round had whizzed just over his back. I dropped another cartridge into my 7mm Rem. Mag. Thompson/Center Encore and tried again. This time we heard the bullet hit, and the buck started running straight toward us. He veered off to our left, and when he stopped, I hit him again. It was over.

Upon reaching our deer in the gathering darkness, Ron and I made several discoveries. First, the 11-pointer's right eye was gone, apparently the result of an antler encounter gone bad. Second, he had a huge knot between his knee and hoof on one foreleg, which might have been caused by a run-in with an automobile or some other accident months or years earlier. But neither of these injuries was the deer's most obvious deformity. Those antlers that had looked so wide were now practically touching each other!

How could this be? Only a few minutes earlier had we seen the buck standing out there behind that doe, and the videotape confirmed what we were sure we'd seen: an outside spread of around 24 inches. Had I somehow shot the wrong deer?

No -- I'd taken a buck with a variable spread!

As it turned out, at some time in the not-so-distant past the buck had cracked his skull plate around the base of his right antler. There wasn't a broken point on either antler, but evidence of the trauma was obvious. Although the skin wasn't broken, the right antler was loose enough to swing freely.

When the buck walked out behind that doe, his outside spread was right at 2 feet. But when he hit the ground, his loose right antler flopped over, giving him an outside spread of not over 17 inches! In fact, so loose was the right antler that the tips of its beam and some tines actually could be made to touch their counterparts on the left side. This buck literally could have shaken his head and rattled his own rack!

Having shot dozens of bucks and observed hundreds more, I'm well aware that they suffer injuries, just as people do. Still, it was amazing to realize that even with an eye missing, a broken foreleg on the mend and an antler flopping off the side of his head, this buck apparently had just one thing on his mind -- and it wasn't his personal comfort. No, he was still as eager as ever to find and breed a doe. The calendar and his nose told him it was time, and he was going to do his best to act the part of a rutting buck.

Are all of them this focused on breeding? Perhaps not. But I can say with great conviction that when the mating urge hits a big buck, he's going to go where he thinks the action is -- even if that action is what got him injured him in the first place!

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