Ask almost any bowhunter in Kentucky to name the country's best deer hunter, and you're going to get a slew of votes for David Howard. The proof, they say, is hanging inside the man's home.
David's most recent accomplishments - arrowing both the runner-up and the new state record in consecutive seasons - might've made national headlines. But his early achievements have gone largely unnoticed beyond his circle of loyal friends.
The deer hunter from London, Kentucky, has been a fan of com-pound bows and treestands since the early 1970s, when most hunters had never held or used them. And he rarely allows a difficult tree to keep him from getting above the deer he hunts.
He's equal parts Fred Bear, Del Austin and squirrel. And if you've heard stories about his prowess, it's likely that this humble man didn't tell them.
One of David's earliest and most unusual whitetails was a public land buck with a rack so gnarly that it wasn't scored for more than 40 years.
David arrowed it while hunting the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area, the long peninsula between Lake Barkley and Kentucky Lake in western Kentucky and Tennessee.
"I found a fairly large field overgrown with weeds and greenbrier. The weeds were about 4 feet tall and so full of ticks that, had you walked through, you might have bled to death before you could get out," David told Ed Waite, who measured the deer.
David wound up leaving his Baker-style treestand on the ground and climbing a tree by its limbs. The second day he did that, he arrowed this unusual buck.
"I come a hair of not shooting him because he was so freaky-looking. But then I decided I was going to shoot it if for no other reason than to get a good look at what he was wearing on top of his head," he admitted.
This wonky LBL buck carries 189 1/8 inches of antler, and that's without benefit of an inside spread. Because it doesn't have identifiable main beams, spread cannot be determined.
David eventually quit hunting the public tract because of its ticks.
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