Mystery Rack Revealed: The Legend of Torchlight Lake

What if the hunter who downed a record-setting buck hadn’t been able to get off work that afternoon? What if he’d decided to hunt another stand? What if the buck hadn’t stopped for a moment just before vanishing into the thicket? What if the hunter hadn’t kept looking hard for blood after first finding no sign of a hit?

Similar questions can be asked even about trophies that have been dead for a century. For instance, what if a man from Mississippi hadn’t walked into a spare bedroom in a home in Minnesota and curiously peeked under a blanket. . .and then, as a direct result of what he saw, decided to part ways with a legendary baseball card?

Believe it or not, that scenario isn’t hypothetical. It’s at the heart of the true story of one of the most impressive bucks from the 1920s.

As a whitetail historian, I know bizarre twists often punctuate the search for trophy racks from long ago. In fact, some of the most intriguing vintage bucks have proved to be elusive far longer in death than in life. James Jordan’s former world-record typical, lost for a half-century after being shot in Wisconsin in 1914, immediately comes to mind but certainly isn’t the only good example.

In the case of the aforementioned man from Mississippi, getting home with a huge rack was the conclusion of unique circumstances. Befitting its setting in Minnesota’s great North Woods, the story seems about as believable as those concerning Paul Bunyan. But this one’s apparently all true, and now, for the first time, some of it can be told.

SEEKING THE UNUSUAL

In looking at how these events unfolded, let’s start with the one currently identifiable person involved: Jack Mallette.

A resident of Jackson, Mississippi, Jack has had a long, interesting career in the “vintage collectibles” business. He deals in the rare and obscure, with a particular penchant for outdoors-related items from long ago. He devotes countless hours to researching, locating, acquiring and then reselling these tidbits of history.

While these items are in themselves fascinating, Jack claims getting to know the people he encounters in the business is what really makes it worthwhile to him. And one such encounter would prove key to our story.

“I had gone up to Minnesota to do some family research, because my great-great-grandfather on my mother’s side was the founder of the town of Detroit Lakes,” he begins. “That’s where I met the fellow I bought the rack from. I met him at a local gun show there in Detroit Lakes about five years ago.”

Jack and his fellow collector talked for some time, and eventually it led to an invitation to the Minnesotan’s rural home. “Come out to the house and stay a couple nights with me and my wife,” he said. “We’ll feed the bears out in the back yard.” Never having participated in a bear feeding, Jack accepted the gracious offer, beginning a friendship that continues to this day.

GENERATIONS OF OUTDOORSMEN

In getting to know his host, Jack learned that the family had been in northern Minnesota for several generations and that they’d long been deep into hunting big whitetails. In fact, in the early days, one family member shot a buck that reportedly had not only an impressive rack, but a body weight of 423 pounds. This region historically has been known as much for exceptionally heavy deer as for big antlers, so despite a lack of documentation of that weight, the claim might well be true.

The family also is said to favor more typical racks, as opposed to non-typicals. That fact likewise plays into our story.

To set the stage for what follows, we now shift about 175 miles east of Detroit Lakes. We’re heading to Torchlight Lake, a small, natural body of water about 30 miles southwest of Duluth.

The lake’s name apparently dates back to the earliest days of European settlement, and it reflects an even older fishing tradition. Local Ojibwe suspended birchbark “torches” over the front of their canoes at night, using the light to lure assorted kinds of fish into spearing range. Torchlighting was also a widely used native fishing technique in other parts of the region, though this lake seems to be the only one named for it in Minnesota.

To show how far back Jack’s friend’s local heritage runs, his earliest ancestors in the region actually learned the ancient fishing technique from area natives, spearing pike, muskies and walleyes. At the time there was no state law against this method. In fact, certain species, primarily pike and “rough” fish, still can be legally taken by spear.

Back in the 1920s, whitetail numbers in most of North America were low. That certainly was the case in northern Minnesota, which by then had seen heavy logging activity and pioneer subsistence hunting for decades. Even so, hunting regulations of the day allowed for taking multiple deer per hunter. (The Department of Natural Resources wouldn’t come into existence until 1931, but the state had begun to issue deer licenses – priced at 25 cents, or roughly $10 in 2024 value – back in 1899).

Jack’s friend’s family found whitetail success around Torchlight Lake, joining with neighbors to gun hunt each other’s land. Unfortunately, details of their preferred methods have been lost to time, but drives were a common tactic in that era.

ONE SPECIAL WHITETAIL

On a hunt at Torchlight Lake in the mid-1920s, Jack’s friend’s grandfather bagged a great buck. However, the rack apparently wasn’t seen as all that special at the time.

“When he shot this incredible non-typical, they hung the skull on the wall in their barn near Torchlight Lake,” Jack says. “And it stayed there for decades.”

Roughly 10 years ago, Jack’s friend inquired about the neglected skull. “You know, I really do like that rack,” he said. “Can I have it?” The rest of the family agreed to let him take it.

Fast-forward roughly a decade, to 2023, for the rest of our story.

“When I first saw the rack, it was under a blanket on the top bunk in his spare bedroom,” Jack recalls. “I saw part of one of the antlers sticking out.

“What is that?” he asked his host.

As soon as the man peeled back the blanket, Jack’s jaw hit the proverbial floor.

“I held it up and went, ‘Oh, my God,’” he remembers.

“Yeah,” the man said. “That’s pretty much everybody’s impression when they first see it.”

A YANKEE SAVES THE DAY

“I’m in the ‘stuff’ business,” Jack points out, “so there’s not a lot of things that I feel like I just have to own. But that rack was one of them.”

His host is a fellow collector of vintage items, so thus began some serious negotiations. While their opinions on the rack’s value started out far apart, they ultimately agreed on a fair price.

So far, so good. From Jack’s perspective, though, there was a minor problem: he didn’t have that amount of funding readily available. But as he says, “You make do with what you have.” And what he had was something few of the rest of us have ever even seen with our own eyes, much less owned: a 1957 Topps Mickey Mantle baseball card.

“I’d sent it to PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator) for grading, and it had come back graded an 8, which is near-mint,” Jack notes. “As I started driving back home from my friend’s house, I realized I had photos of that card on my phone. So that night, when I got to my motel, I put the card on eBay and priced it to sell. The price I put on it was exactly what I’d agreed to pay for the rack.

“Sure enough, I checked the next morning, as I was getting into the car and heading south, and the card had sold.”

Jack immediately called his friend and said, “I’m coming back.”

“What?”

“I’m coming back,” Jack repeated. “I’m transferring the money from my PayPal account into your PayPal account . . . and I’m taking that deer rack home with me.”

To a collector of vintage baseball cards, the deal Jack struck might not seem a great one. An old deer head for a 1957 near-mint Mantle? But to a man drawn to unique items from the outdoors, it was an easy move to justify.

“I thought, ‘If I can trade this Mickey Mantle for that incredible whitetail rack, I’ll do it,’” Jack says. “I knew I could find another PSA 8 Mickey Mantle, but I’d never find a non-typical rack like this one.”

THE GUESSING GAME

Upon arriving back home in Mississippi with his prize, Jack decided to have some fun with it. An active user of social media, he went to one of the countless hunting pages on Facebook to post photos of the rack. But the post was cryptic, offering no hunter name, year, score or other details. All Jack revealed was a tantalizing hint about the geographic origin of the antlers: “up north.”

Fellow Facebookers immediately began to bombard the trophy owner with questions about the rack, trying to uncover whatever they could about location. But Jack held fast, revealing nothing more. He wouldn’t say if “up north” meant northern Mississippi, northern Canada or any given location in between.

What the public didn’t know was that as this grand guessing game commenced, the rack’s owner and I already were discussing this feature for North American Whitetail. With NAW’s steady focus on great deer through the ages, Jack agreed that this would be the ideal place to finally reveal what can be shared.

Admittedly, to this point the Torchlight buck’s story remains incomplete. For one thing, as this issue went to press, Jack had yet to make arrangements to have the rack measured. He’s counted 37 points but says he isn’t sure if they’ll all end up meeting the legal definition.

Whether or not the deer ever gets officially measured remains to be seen, as does any plan to publicly reveal the hunter’s name. What we can do is show off the massive rack and note that the events leading to this point in the story are every bit as unique as it is. Should there always be unanswered questions surrounding this mysterious giant from yesteryear, it’ll only add to his allure.

---