As soon as Kevin Thomas washed down his last bite of a sausage and egg croissant with a swig of Mountain Dew, he decided he'd better head for his treestand. He had two deer tags in his pocket, and he'd already decided to pop the first whitetail that he saw. Buck or doe, the hunter from Sweet Springs, Mo., was itching for fresh venison.
It was breaking day by the time Kevin nudged shut the door of his '75 Dodge, and he still had to cross a corn field to reach his fixed-position stand in the timber. Half the crop had already been cut, so he could easily see the distant woods line as he trudged across the corn stubble.
When he was within 200 yards of the trees, Kevin spotted a familiar gray shape about halfway between him and his stand. The deer was walking across the field with its head held low, but the sky was light enough for Kevin to determine that it was a buck.
Kevin might have shot then, but the buck was angling toward him. When it was at 50 yards and at the crest of a terrace, Kevin squeezed the Model 700's stiff trigger and the deer collapsed. Barely 20 minutes into the 2001 season's rifle opener, he was about to put a tag on a "tall-antlered" buck!
"I only knew that his rack was tall," he said. "That's about it. Because it wasn't very wide, and I had no idea how many points it had.
"But when I walked up on him lying there, I knew immediately that it was a record book deer," he added. "After I danced around a little bit, I sat down in amazement. About 80 percent or more of it was in velvet!"
Since Kevin couldn't handle the big deer by himself - let alone lift the 250-pounder onto his flatbed truck - he drove to a friend's house to recruit a helper. Danny Sims was happy to oblige, even happier when he saw the unusual buck.
The buck with the Medusa-like antlers turned Kevin into an overnight celebrity. Within a few days of the harvest, the hunter and his prize had already appeared in three local newspapers. And hordes of people got to see and photograph the deer before it ever made it to the taxidermist.
"Several folks who've seen him … I've had to pick their jaws off the floor and hand 'em back to them," he laughs.
"But I'm not a great hunter," he quietly insists. "I had no idea there was a buck like that on the farm I hunt. I'm just lucky - pure and simple. If he'd been a doe or a small buck, I'd have still shot it. I like deer meat and I like to shoot. The antlers were merely a bonus."
The buck was green-scored in mid-November (before the Boone and Crockett Club's mandatory, 60-day drying period) by a couple of measurers who came to Kevin's taxidermist, Dorothy Diamond's shop. After much deliberation, they came up with more than 255 inches after deductions.
Since Buckmasters does not require a drying period, veteran BTR scorer Jackie McConnell taped the rack a couple of days later. Jackie, who is no stranger to big irregular whitetails, found more than 293 inches of antler - even without the benefit of the 13-inch inside spread.
Kevin was so happy with his B&C green score that he almost didn't bother having it taped on the BTR scale. Now he's happy that he did.
Because inside spread isn't included in the "official" tally, there aren't many occasions when a BTR score will be higher than a B&C score. Kevin's 35-pointer is one of the exceptions.
Kevin doesn't know if the monstrous buck was a resident of the 100-acre farm he hunts or if it was only passing through in search of a doe or food. Only a very small portion of the land - maybe 10 acres - is wooded. The rest is planted in either corn or soybeans.