Shawn Trull of Kennedy, Alabama, isn't quite sure whether to refer to the deer he shot in late January 2014 as a he or a she. Biologically, the antlered deer is both.
"Even before I shot it, we just called it The Freak," he told Lisa Price, who's writing the story for Rack magazine. And that was before he even knew the whitetail - carrying both testes and ovaries - was a genuine hermaphrodite.
"It was kind of sad," Trull continued. "He was either by himself, or if there were other deer around, he was off by himself, watching them."
Trull was hunting the family's 80-acre cattle farm in Lamar County, acreage he'd pretty much ignored until about four years ago. He began retrieving trail camera photographs of the strange and entirely nocturnal deer from the start.
"The Freak was a monster then, with drop tines that looked to be 8 inches long," Shawn said. "For three years, we got pictures of him, but never once in the daytime."
Meanwhile, the antlers continued to grow, mostly thicker. They were never shed, and they were covered in what looked more like hair than velvet.
Neighbors collected trail cam photos of the deer as well. One hunter actually got a shot at it during bow season, the only time it was seen on the hoof while the sun was shining.
Shawn's opportunity came Jan. 27, 2014.
Because of the northeast wind, he went to an elevated shooting house overlooking a food plot. Around 4 p.m., He looked up and saw The Freak in the field, which is where it died.
The smallest of this deer's eight circumference measurements is 7 4/8 inches. Mass accounts for 62 6/8 inches of its BTR composite score: 188 7/8.
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