After stopping the truck, Kevin determined that the object protruding from the water was an antler tine and part of a deer’s body. Unfortunately, while trying to reach the carcass from the bank, the hunter lost his balance and fell into the pond. Thoroughly wet anyway, Kevin decided to pull the deer to the bank in order to examine it -- but to his surprise, it wouldn’t budge. While checking to see what the deer was hung up on, he came to the shocked realization that a second, completely submerged deer was locked rack-to-rack to the deer on top.

Grabbing some rope from his truck, Kevin secured one end to the deer and the other to his 4-wheel ATV and tried to haul them out. However, the combined weight of the waterlogged carcasses was simply too much for the small machine to handle. Undaunted, he eventually managed to sidle his truck close enough to the pond’s edge to drag the bucks up onto the bank.

It was unbelievable: Lying on the ground within 30 yards of the hunter’s stand were two whitetails much bigger than any that he’d ever managed to bring down in the countless hours of hunting time he’d logged. Nipper could only stare down at the dead beasts and shake his head.

Both of the whitetails were huge in both body and antler size. In fact, the combined live weight of the two deer was 510 pounds -- over a quarter- ton. Both bucks were mature typical 10-pointers, aged at 5 1/2 and 4 1/2 years.

The rack of the younger buck exhibited exceptional tine length -- including individual points measuring 15 1/8, 14 2/8, 12 1/8, and 11 6/8 inches -- and, gross-scoring 169 3/8, sufficed to qualify the deer for the Boone and Crockett record book as a picked-up rack with a final net score of 161. The older buck’s rack, though exceptionally massive, lacked outstanding tine length, and was scored at 145 B&C. To say the least, both whitetails were substantial trophies.

“Those bucks literally stopped traffic in downtown Cordele,” Jim said. “Later, I acquired the deer from Kevin -- had them mounted. And for several years they hung in a small grocery I operated on the northeast side of town. Never in a thousand years would I have believed I’d be involved in a similar scenario with my own son -- but it certainly has been a gratifying experience.”

After getting out of the grocery business, Jim passed the mounts on to Jeff Taunton, a trooper with the Georgia State Patrol. Jeff, an avid whitetail enthusiast and hunter, now owns the land on which the bucks were found.

* * *

Although accounts of the discovery of locked-antler whitetails filter into the news, the actual incidence of these ill-fated hookups could hardly be considered common. By and large, hunters have little chance of encountering a pair of locked bucks, simply because the deer involved are usually large, mature bucks, and in heavily hunted areas, older age-class bucks are generally scarce, in some cases completely absent from a herd.