Ohio hunter David Cain was in a deer drought, much of it self-imposed. In 2002, he'd arrowed a BTR 12-pointer with split brow tines. But since then, he'd been passing up inferior bucks. 

"My family hunts on a 150-acre farm, and we've been managing it for big bucks," Dave said. "We've taken many does, and it took about six years for us to start to see the big bucks."

Dave's 2005 archery season was laced with sightings of a quality buck.

"I saw that buck half a dozen times during bow season, but the closest was about 80 yards," he said. "It didn't respond to calls, although I tried everything.

"Right before the rut, I saw it through binoculars, very far away, and I wasn't sure how big it was," he added. "Then when I saw it at 80 yards, I judged it to be at least a 140- or 150-incher."

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The two men approached the downed buck cautiously, from different sides. Johnny King's bullets had dropped the enormous whitetail, but Brad Heisz, who'd answered his cousin's desperate call for help, had obligingly administered the coup de grace.

Brad reached it first, while Johnny was circling around in front. He knelt, grasped the unbelievably huge rack and lifted the head to admire it. At that moment, the buck propelled itself upward and twisted away from the wide-eyed hunter in a last-ditch effort to regain its footing.

Following a loud crack that would've brought a smile to Hank Aaron's face, Brad was left holding most of the left antler.
Johnny didn't realize that the buck, which never got its wheels back under it, was responsible. It appeared to him as if his crazed cousin, Bradzilla, had simply walked up and ripped off the antler.

"Brad, what the hell?" he asked, horrified.

Brad was speechless, looking at the rack as if he'd broken an arm off the statue of Venus.

It took a few minutes for the bewildered hunters to literally piece together the story.

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