Too ... Make That Three ... Perfect
By Kenneth Piper
The bucks we’re highlighting this week aren’t going to break any records, but they are great examples of how some really special deer don’t get the recognition they deserve.
We don’t normally talk about bucks scoring under 180 in the BB411, but three bucks came across my desk this week that caught my eye because of their similarities and impressive frames.
Michael Love shot a 168 5/8-inch 10-pointer on Oct. 14. Brandon Doty got a 170 4/8-inch 10-pointer on Oct. 5. Finally, Evans Woehlecke shot a 175 4/8 10-pointer on Nov. 13 of 1997.
Evans just last week decided he wanted to enter his buck in the Buckmasters Trophy Records book and, amazingly, scorer Terry Rethman still had the scoresheet after all this time. It struck me as I was entering the measurements into the computer that it was so long ago that there was no line for an email address on the scoresheet!
All three of those bucks were taken with compound bows, and all fall in the BTR’s Perfect category (less than 1% irregularity and a matching number of typical points on each side).
The biggest compound-bow-taken Perfect of all time was recorded by Bill Testerman in 2012 in Linn County, Missouri. That 13-pointer scored an incredible 208 4/8 (the oddball point was 1 5/8 inches, which came to less than 1% of the deer’s total antler measurement without spread).
In case you’re wondering, the highest-scoring Perfect 8-pointer by compound bow ever taken (179 3/8) was recorded by Don Erickson in South Dakota in 2017. That was a velvet buck, however, and the biggest hard-antlered compound bow 8-pointer was taken just this year by Brandon Burman in Nelson County, Kentucky (174 1/8).
Yes, it has been a great year for big Perfects, and 10s (or 8s) that reach the 170-inch range are pretty special bucks. It’s unfortunate they don’t get more recognition, but maybe we can help change that!
Congratulations to our giant 10 killers, Michael, Brandon and Evans! Also keep an eye out for Brandon Burman’s story in a 2025 issue of Buckmasters magazine.