Ever seen a big ol’ buck walking around with a spare set of antlers?
Trail camera footage captured this sizable deer walking around with additional antlers hanging off of its rack (thanks to some barbwire), and hunters everywhere have helped the video go viral. And that’s the thing about wild animals… they just have live with whatever they’ve got going on.
An injured deer, or a deer wrapped up in barbwire, can’t really go to the doctor to get things ironed out. In rare circumstances, wildlife officials will step in and help an animal get untangled from something. But for the most part, they reap what they sow, and live with whatever happens to them.
In this case, this massive buck somehow got some barbwire wrapped up around his very impressive and mature set of antlers. That’d be intriguing on its own to catch on a trail cam, but this footage also showed half a rack also caught in the barbwire that the buck was lugging around.
As you likely already know, bucks grow and shed antlers on a yearly basis, and their antlers get larger with age. They end up being a symbol of health and dominance in the territories they call home, and they often put them to use to mark territory and, on occasion, fight other bucks.
If I had to guess what happened to this deer in the video below, I’d say there’s a good chance that he and another buck got into a scuffle that eventually led the two to get tangled up in some fencing. One of the bucks became unstuck by losing half of its rack. The other – that you’ll see in this video – got away by taking some of the barbwire with him, and it just so happened to come with the bonus of another antler.
Check it out and see what you think:
How crazy is that?
It’s important to note that the buck is without a doubt a future trophy kill. If someone were to bring it down with the barbwire and other antler still attached? That’d be one of the best mounts potentially ever, and would make for quite the story for the rest of the lucky hunter’s life.
Those that caught the video thanks to WiseEye were perplexed as to how the buck found himself in that kind of carrying-around-barbwire-and-an-antler position. We might not ever know the true story (I feel pretty good about the one I laid out), but hunters are having fun taking their very own guesses as to what happened:
“Looks like the winner to me.”
“Someone’s dropped rattling antlers maybe? Big boy wanted to play with them?”
“Dude is carrying pieces of his last battle victim.”
“Wearing it like a trophy.”
“He likes shed hunting too.”
“Would make a great mount… I’d love to know the story behind this.”
