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Multiple Beams in Oklahoma

Multiple Beams in Oklahoma

By Mike Handley

The day someone makes an affordable trail camera capable of operating underwater, Travis Piepenbrok might buy it. Or he might not.

The pest control technician from Vinita, Oklahoma, is a catfish noodler, accustomed to sliding his arm into holes in river banks and extracting nesting flatheads, many of them weighing in the double digits.

Noodlers rarely know what’s in a hole beforehand, but probing a river bank with nothing but bravado and high hopes is part of the thrill.

Travis is also a deer hunter, accustomed to waiting for whatever buck might come into range. In 2018, however, he did not stumble blindly afield; he had an inkling of what might happen when he set up a ladder stand on the 20 acres he hunts in Craig County.

In late August 2018, he collected trail camera photographs of a buck with multiple beams. Before that, he had no idea such a deer lived on or passed through the property.

The rack was fabulous, though its wearer was abnormally thin.

Travis set up a ladder stand on Oct. 1, and he sat in it every evening when the rifle season opened. He had no reason to believe his dream deer would show, since photos indicated it passed through there only at 3 a.m., but there’s always a chance, right?

“Of course, the one day I didn’t go, the buck showed up by my stand at 1:30 p.m.,” he told Gita Smith, who’s writing the story for Rack magazine.

When he went out Saturday, Nov. 17, he saw between 20 and 25 bucks in a hayfield shortly after daybreak. One of them was the triple-beamed buck, no more than 120 yards distant. Another had to be that deer’s son.

After the boom, the bull of the woods ran in an arc for about 100 yards before collapsing. Five minutes later, Travis was making tracks for it.

He soon discovered why the 150-pound buck was so undernourished, and it wasn’t because of its considerable age.

“It had an infection with pus pockets. Half the deer’s brain was green,” Travis said. “It probably began with a fight, when it got stabbed in the head by another buck’s antler.

“I blame the deer’s mistake of showing up in daylight on its being sick,” he added.

The deer hasn’t been scored yet for the BTR.

— Read Recent Blog! In Praise of Grunt Calls: The third-largest whitetail felled during the 2018 season came out of Indiana.

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