It's ok to call this Georgia buck ugly, but who wouldn't like to take it on a date with a taxidermist?
Benny Overholt admits he was wrong when he said the homely deer his trail cameras photographed in 2019 wouldn't amount to much.
The animal's rack remained clad in velvet well into December that year, but it still shed its antlers. Benny found both in February.
"He wasn't amounting to much," he said. "The (right) side was a little ugly, too."
The next set of antlers was also odd, but larger. In fact, the 33-year-old dairy farmer from Marshallville, Georgia, contemplated shooting the buck. He declined only because it had broken off a portion of the rack's right side.
"I'm sure 98% of people would've shot it. Even with the broken side, its rack had 6- to 8-inch bases," he said. "I kept my cameras running, even after the season, because I wanted those sheds."
But the animal didn't drop them. After losing some antler tips, the existing rack had a growth spurt in March.
"It started throwing trash everywhere," Benny said.
Three days prior to the state's Sept. 11 bow opener, a Saturday, Benny retrieved daytime images of the unique buck.
"I decided to go to the bedding area that first afternoon, since the wind was favorable," he said. "I parked at our heifer pen and walked between 100 and 150 yards.
"I saw deer five minutes before dark, confirming what the camera had told me."
Benny didn't hunt Sunday or the following morning, but he went back to the bedding area Monday afternoon. After an hour and a half of seeing nothing, he spotted a deer – a buck – at 65 yards.
"I saw the fuzz, the points and just a little bit of the deer's body. I knew immediately it was Velvet," he said.
The bow shot was about 35 yards, and he recovered the deer in the wee hours of the next morning, helped by family members and a friend with a tracking dog. Blood was sparse, but the shot had been perfect.
"It was really incredible. I was just fortunate to be blessed by the Good Lord. It was humbling," he said.
He says the 229-pound buck's testicles were shriveled, which explains why it didn't drop its 2020 rack and was still in velvet.
Concerned about protecting and preserving the velvet, Benny took the deer straight to the cooler, and then to the taxidermist. A quick taping showed 11 and 8- to 9-inch bases, but the rack has not been scored.
There's a lot more to Benny's story, but you'll have to read about it in an upcoming issue of Rack magazine.
— Read Recent Blog! Vermont's New No. 1 Perfect: The buck, estimated to be 9 1/2 years old, was about 20 pounds heavier than the average whitetail in the area.