I wish I could’ve seen Philip Carter’s jaw drop when he walked up to the deer he shot on Nov. 14.
The 41-year-old from Bentonville, Arkansas, knew he was shooting at a great buck that rainy opening day of Missouri’s rifle season, but there’s no way he could’ve seen the 19 sticker points mostly behind its brow tines.
From the front and from a distance of 20 yards, the deer seems little more than a decent 10- or 11-pointer. But the rack carries 30 points, which tally an incredible 214 7/8 inches!
Philip is the manager of a collision repair shop in his home state of Arkansas. In 2018, he and some family members traded property in their state for 575 acres bordering the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri’s Ozarks.
Trail cameras revealed some world-class whitetails awaited them.
The first couple of years, they worked on building a cabin. While it was taking shape, they slept in a camper parked inside a barn. They also created a network of trails, planted food plots and hung treestands.
In 2020, Philip wasn’t able to hunt prior to the gun season. Or at least he chose not to, despite his original intention to bowhunt the property.
His enthusiasm waned in October, however, when his nephew put a crossbow bolt through the 175-inch buck at the top of Philip’s wish list.
“I was bummed,” he admitted to Gita Smith, who’s writing the story for Rack magazine. “A 10-year-old got the one I wanted, so I decided I wasn’t even going to buy a tag.”
He obviously changed his mind. The trail cams were yielding far too many photos of respectable bucks for him to stay indoors forever.
Although rain was forecasted for much of opening day of rifle season, Philip arrived at the property just before lunchtime. His brother-in-law, Roger, told him a huge buck had been photographed by two cameras within the previous 24 hours.
In order to stay dry, Philip went to a box stand close to where the two cameras were stationed. Normally a bowhunter, he hadn’t fired a rifle in a decade. Roger had even checked the scope’s zero for him.
Soon after Philip settled into the blind, he missed a big 8-pointer from only 60 yards. The buck had been chasing a doe.
Unaccustomed to watching deer run off without leaking blood, he checked in with Roger, just to make sure his bro-in-law had actually sighted-in the rifle.
After regaining his composure, Philip began using his grunt tube in hopes of luring the 4x4 back out into the open.
“Two minutes later, I looked up and saw the deer we’d seen in the trail cam photos. It was between 10 and 20 yards from me, slightly quartering away, and about a foot away from a scrape,” he said.
Despite the squeaky swivel chair and at least two thumps when his rifle hit the sides of the blind, Philip somehow managed to stick the barrel out of the window, dial down his scope, and squeeze the trigger.
The 30-pointer – yes, 30 points – collapsed after dashing only 30 yards.
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