I think I can speak for every deer hunter out there when I say it’s the rush of a lifetime to bag a massive buck.
However, this trophy buck is the definition of a once-in-a-lifetime harvest.
This one all went down in Atlus, Oklahoma, when a 17-year-old deer hunter took down one of the strangest bucks you’ll ever see…
A cactus buck.
Cactus bucks are bucks that retain a large amount of velvet on their antlers due to alterations in testosterone levels, according to the ODFW.
This makes the buck’s antlers look similar to a cactus.
The hunter, Major Edmonds, told ABC 7:
“Sunday morning, as soon as the sun came up, we can see him out there and knew he was bigger than every deer out in the field and you could see solid black over his head. It was pretty cool.”
At the time, Edmonds had never seen the buck before and hadn’t heard of it either:
“Well we didn’t know the deer existed. Really, we didn’t have any pictures of him on trail cam or anything.”
After he took the buck down, he discussed the excitement he felt:
”It was amazing. I was out there with my 82-year-old great-grandfather and he was the best person I could have been hunting with to kill that deer. It was crazy we were shaking when we shot it and walked up to it and saw it.
They (Taxidermist in Iowa Park) are going to freeze dry the rack to preserve all the velvet and all everything with the antler and spray it with some preservative on there and we will have that back in a few months.”
Check it out:
