Here's a picture of the new world record whitetail buck.

It was taken by the cousin of a co-worker's sister's, uncle's, best friend's, son-in-law's, niece's hairdresser's, neighbor's ex-boyfriend's oldest nephew. Reportedly it will score 2603-1/8 by B&C standard and was shot in West Texas on a really windy day, 85 degrees downhill, around a curve at 900 yards with a .22 cal. rifle.

Supposedly, this deer had killed a Brahma bull, two Land Rovers, and six Jehovah's Witnesses in the last two weeks alone. They said it was winning a fight with Bigfoot when it was shot. It has also been confirmed that the buck had been seen drinking discharge water from a nuclear power plant.

All this has been checked and confirmed on Snopes.

Really. Honest!!!

Sincerely,
GEORGE BUSH

In my 33 years in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, I have never seen a new-born baby moose.

The mother picked a small, quiet neighborhood, and had her baby in a front yard just off of US 2, 5:30 AM. Allen and I were out bike riding when we came upon the pair. The lady across the street from this house told us she saw it being born. We saw them at 5:30 PM. So the little one was 12 hours old.

What an awesome place we live in to see such a sight.

Bow fishing for carp has grown in popularity for good reason: Shooters routinely bag some humongous fish, and often lots of them.

But the monster that Colton Otto, 20, of Mayer and his buddy CJ Bryne, 19, of Victoria shot on Lake Waconia earlier this season was a jaw-dropper.

It measured 45 inches and weighed an incredible 55 1/2 pounds -- on a certified scale. "That's bigger than anything we had ever shot by about 15 pounds," Otto said.

On a windy, dark night, each arrowed the fish, and then the pair struggled to land it. "We reached in with both hands and threw it into the boat, and we knew right then it was big," Otto said.

How big is a 55 1/2-pound carp? That's the exact weight of the current Minnesota state record, caught by hook and line in Clearwater Lake in Wright County.

Otto and Bryne shot the big carp at night on May 1 and took it to be weighed later that morning. Then they contacted the DNR the next day -- and got the bad news.

"They said the state records don't include fish shot by bow and arrow," Otto said. Only fish caught by hook and line are eligible.

"I'm not really disappointed. To us, it's something amazing."

Even now in July, the pair still is bow fishing. Otto thinks there's a record carp in Lake Waconia, though he's not really interested in trying to catch it with a hook and line.

"I'm more into bow fishing," he said. "We like to go for big ones."

Brainerd Dispatch Posted: March 18, 2011 - 6:25pm
By Brian S. Peterson

That Al Lindner and Jim Kalkofen were planning for and talking about the Minnesota Fishing Challenge as if it were right around the corner shouldn’t come as a surprise. Not with this tournament.

In only its third year, the Challenge has, quite literally, become a constant. For many fishing tournaments, talk and planning heats up just prior to the event. But with the Challenge, there’s a certain year-round presence.

And passion. It’s obvious that, with the Challenge, the two go hand in hand.

“There are some avid tournament fishermen, but this is a different feel,” said Lindner, a local and national fishing icon and the tournament host. “The fun and camaraderie is phenomenal. It’s at a point now where it goes right on the calendar for the next year.”

“There are some avid tournament fishermen, but this is a different feel,” said Lindner, a local and national fishing icon and the tournament host. “The fun and camaraderie is phenomenal. It’s at a point now where it goes right on the calendar for the next year.”

This year’s Challenge is still a ways off — June 4 on GullLake. But because of a unique tournament entry twist, it has become almost a year-round fundraising effort for some entrants. After paying a $100 entry fee per two-person team, the pairing must raise $500 in donations for Minnesota Teen Challenge to participate in the tournament. That hasn’t been a problem for teams, which have averaged $1,000 in donations the first two years, said Kalkofen, the tournament organizer and himself a well-known fishing personality. He added that a team from Litchfield has raised the most money both years, including $7,150 last year. The runner-up team also raised more than $7,100 last year.

Zac Anderson, 7, son of Sam and Tiffany Anderson, Inver Grove Heights, proudly displayed a rock bass he landed in last year’s Minnesota Fishing Challenge on GullLake.

Emily Eberspacher of Rockford was all smiles after landing this northern pike in last year’s Challenge.

“Some have had a personal goal,” said Kalkofen, who said the tournament has netted about $100,000 for Minnesota Teen Challenge in each of the first two years.

In its first year, despite cold and windy weather, the tournament drew about 80 teams, Kalkofen said. Last year, in near-perfect weather but in the middle of the economic downturn, that number was down a bit to about 70 teams. This year, the goal again is a full field of 100 teams.

“We will have accomplished what we wanted to accomplish when we see 100 teams,” Lindner said. “That’s what we set out to do.”

To get there, Lindner and Kalkofen hope to draw more locals.

“Seventy percent (of Challenge participants) are from out of the area,” Kalkofen said. “We would like to see more Brainerd lakes teams participate. So many people are becoming aware of this and now we want them to enter.

“It’s exposing the fishery here to so many other people. GullLake is a great resource. We know because we live here. But until you fish it, you can’t comprehend that.”

“It’s amazing mixed-species fishing,” said Lindner, who likely knows GullLake as well as anyone. “And the lake is so healthy. It’s one of those unique bodies of water.”

The tournament, presented by Mills Fleet Farm, takes advantage of that diversity, with a mixed bag division as well as divisions for panfish, walleye, bass and pike. Prizes for the top finishers in each division include MinnKota trolling motors, Frabill ice shelters, U.S. and Canadian resort stays and dozens of rods and reels donated by top professional tournament anglers and marine and fishing tackle industry leaders. There’s also a plaque for “the ugliest fish,” awarded for the biggest rough fish. A 17-pound carp earned that distinction last year.

Just the thought of last year’s “ugliest fish” prompted a chuckle from Kalkofen and Lindner as they touched on the spirit of the “tournament.”

“You can have any-sized boat with any skill level. Just because it’s called a tournament ... It’s not a pro tournament. It’s a fun tournament,” Kalkofen said. “We’ve had people win in 14-, 15-, 16-foot boats.”

But the tournament does boast a deal of fishing star power. Besides Kalkofen and Lindner, highly regarded fishing personality Steve Pennaz will serve as honorary tournament director. So that the event has become a success virtually overnight shouldn’t come as a surprise. But according to Kalkofen and Lindner, the cause has a lot to do with that success.

For more than 25 years, Minnesota Teen Challenge has helped addicted individuals find healing and hope, according to an MTC news release. It serves teens and adults with long-term faith-based recovery programs and short-term treatment programs at locations in Brainerd, Duluth and Minneapolis. Its mission is to assist teens and adults in gaining freedom from chemical addictions and other life-controlling problems by addressing their physical, emotional and spiritual needs.

It’s a cause that’s especially close to Lindner’s heart.

“One of the things that’s emotional and one that touched me is that my wife, when she was 7, her mother was killed by a drunk driver,” Lindner said. “And her father was a drinker. So she ended up in an orphanage. So it has touched me personally.

“Until a story about Teen Challenge got into the paper, I didn’t know what it was. I thought it was for kids in trouble. But I got touched by this thing. It became an eye-opener for me and I got moved by it. I believe in the cause. I hear about the turnaround (in MTC students’ lives). It’s amazing.”

For more information on the Minnesota Fishing Challenge and a schedule and entry blank, go to mntc.org/fishingchallenge. Or contact Kalkofen at 833-8777 or jim.kalkofen@mntc.org.

Teams entering before April 8 will be eligible for a drawing to win a free week’s stay with boat at Pasha Lake Cabins, a special walleye and pike fishing camp north of Thunder Bay, Ontario.

For more information on MTC, contact the Central Minnesota Teen Challenge center at 833-8777 or go to www.mntc.org.

Ryan Muirhead set out on the morning of December 12 with hopes of filling his whitetail tag on the final day of Minnesota’s muzzleloader season. What he found instead--a huge 9 x 10 elk pinned flat on its back, alive, with its massive antlers stuck in the mud. Muirhead was able to free the animal, though it died from the ordeal two days later. Click through to find out how he was able to claim a trophy from this tragic freak occurrence that should rewrite the record books for Minnesota and the world.

The rack green-scored 475 5/8 gross, with a net of 456 4/8 on the Boone & Crockett scale. An updated score will be forthcoming after the 60-day drying period, and a special judging panel convening in 2013 would need to weigh in before anything becomes official. But based on the green score alone, the elk ranks as the third largest nontypical in the world and the largest ever in Minnesota.

The Boone & Crockett world record nontypical elk, a 9 x 14 taken in 2008 on public land in Utah, scored 478 5/8 with a gross of 499 3/8. The current no. 2 scored 465 2/8 and the current no. 3 scored 450 6/8.

How Muirhead eventually came to have the antlers in his possession--after a failed rescue attempt and an investigation by the Minnesota DNR--is a tale worthy of Wild Kingdom. Or Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

Muirhead and a couple of buddies were on state land in northern Minnesota’s Kittson County when they spotted the elk. “We were planning to go out for the morning watch, but it was just too cold at 25 below,” he recalls. “We decided to drive around and see if anything was moving.”

Rounding a bend in a gravel road, they encountered an odd sight: About 30 yards from their truck, 8 yards beyond a barbed wire fence, a bull elk lay kicking in the snow. “He was on his back, chest heaving, steam pouring from his nose,” Muirhead recalls. “He’d been kicking for quite a while and he was worn out.”

On closer examination they saw that the animal’s antlers appeared to be embedded in the muddy ground, pinning its head to the snow. “He’d stuck himself like turtle upside down. No way he was moving.”

“We just sat there for a while trying to think what to do,” Muirhead says. “We were in awe.”

They eventually decided that something needed to be done to help the animal. “He was an old bull and he wasn’t going to live forever, but you don’t want to see him die like that if you can help him.”

The men sought help from a local rancher, who supplied a two-by-four, which they used as a lever to pry the rack from the ground.

“It took a few minutes, but we finally got him three-quarters of the way turned and he flopped over and staggered off. You could see by the holes in the ground how his antlers had been dug down in the mud 8 to 10 inches.”

The bull didn’t go far. “His legs were like Jello,” Muirhead says. “He kind of staggered to the fence and fell down. We all backed off and let him be. His back leg was bloody where he’d been kicking his antler, his chest was heaving. You could tell was worn out and not happy that people were close to him.”

After resting a few minutes, the bull stood and began walking toward the woods. “He kind of turned and looked back at everybody,” Muirhead recalls. “I don’t know if it was a 'thank you' or what it was. Then he made his way into the woods, and it was pure quiet; you couldn’t even hear him moving he was so quiet. We stood and watched him disappear. At that point we’re just in awe.”

Muirhead still had the evening deer hunt ahead, but he couldn’t get the bull out of his mind. “I just had to go back; I knew he wasn’t going to make it far.” On Tuesday, December 14, Muirhead returned to the site with his wife, Josie. They found the bull 600 yards back in the woods.

“He was hunkered down in the willows, and we got within 40 yards before he picked his head up and looked at us. He didn’t try to run. He was coughing, wheezing. He probably had pneumonia from being on his back that long in the cold. You could see where he’d dragged himself 25 yards through the snow to get back in the willows. At that point I knew he was done.”

Since the bull was on state land, Muirhead knew his best chance of claiming the rack was to be there when the animal died. He took Josie home and returned. Over the next six hours he watched the elk from a distance, returning now and then to the truck to warm up.

“It was sad to see a wild animal like that not be able to get up and run and do what he wanted to do. He’d pick up his head every now and then, but he could barely lift that rack. And finally he just stopped picking up his head. To stand there and watch him die, it was tough. It’s tough to see.”

Muirhead contacted the Minnesota DNR, and conservation officer Ben Huener took the carcass into Roseau for a necropsy. After skinning the elk, investigators found puncture marks in the skin cause by a broken rib and by drop tines that were pinned against its back while it lay upside down.

“Being on its back for a couple of hours doesn’t work well with a large animal,” Huener says. “I really can’t imagine there would have been much to do for the animal. I’m guessing the initial impact of falling on its back pretty much did it in.”

DNR biologists removed a tooth for aging, but results are pending. Huener says estimates put the bull at "8 to 10 years plus,” which he notes is far older than most bull elk in the wild. “The animal was on its way down; it wasn’t as big as some of the other bulls, though obviously it carried more mass on its head than some of the animals.”

Interestingly, the bull was found in an area where elk hunting is prohibited. “This is the only way this could have happened legally,” Huener says.

He praised how Muirhead handled the situation. “Calling the DNR was the right thing, because this was the only way he could possess the animal legally. Now he can have it mounted with pride and have all the proper paperwork.”

No one has explained how the big bull came to find himself pinned on his back, undone by his own majestic antlers.

A local landowner had spotted the herd on the move about 2 ½ hours before Muirhead and his buddies found it anchored in mud—he believes the herd was headed to bed when they crossed the road and jumped the fence. “I imagine the whole herd was coming off the field, and he jumped the fence, tripped and somehow flipped upside down and stuck himself,” Muirhead says. “A freak accident. But nobody really knows for sure.”

“You can say it’s just nature, it was his time to die. But nature didn’t put that barbed wire fence there,” he says. “From beginning to end I think everybody’s feelings were the same: Get his animal rolled over and give him a chance, see what happens. You want to see him make it, you really do.”

Adds Huener, “There’s something about a big bull in need of a hand, and everyone got together. It’s kind of cool.”

Now the rack will hang under Muirhead’s 22-foot cathedral ceiling, in a spot that has begged for an elk mount since the day he moved in. He has his mount—and a hell of a story to go with it.

Triple Tragedy Three Ohio Bucks Found Drowned With Antlers Locked.

To a hunter, it’s a stomach-tightening, bizarre sight. At the same time, it’s a stark example of the potential ferocity and brutality of the whitetail rut. These three Ohio bucks somehow locked antlers while battling near a small creek. When one deer slid into a shallow pool, it sealed the fate for all three, who drowned together, antlers still locked. Steve Hill talked to the men who found and recovered the deer and their combined 400-inches of antler to bring you the story of this sad, almost poetic scene.

Forester Jason Good was surveying timber in Meigs County, Ohio, on November 12 when he stumbled upon a bizarre sight that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up: In a waist-deep pool of Leading Creek, nose-to-nose like fish on a stringer, floated three whitetail deer.

The experienced woodsman needed a few minutes to puzzle out exactly what he was seeing—a trio of mature bucks that had locked horns in a battle to the death, illustrating, in the starkest terms, the potential ferocity and brutality of the whitetail rut.

Good spotted the deer from a distance and, at first, thought it was a single carcass. “It was close to the road, and I figured somebody had poached a deer,” he recalls. Even after a second look revealed two deer, he was about to walk away.

“I see dead deer in the woods all the time,” explains Good, who measures timber for a lumber company. “I almost ignored it until I looked again and saw it was three deer.”

From the creek bank he realized he’d found “something special” — not just three deer, but three bucks that appeared to have locked antlers.

“I sat there 20 minutes just looking at them, totally amazed, and it took that long to sink in what I was looking at,” Good says. “I thought, ‘If this is really what I think this is then I cannot screw this up.’ I wanted to make sure everything was done by the book so the landowner got to keep these horns.”

Good called the landowner, Brien Burke.

“He said, ‘Brien, I’ve found something on your property I’ve never seen before, and you’ve got to see it,’” Burke recalls. “I’m thinking a murder, a meth lab, who knows? I said, ‘Jason, just tell me what it is.’ He says, ‘It’s three bucks locked up and they’re floating dead in your creek.’”

Burke couldn’t believe it. “I could see two, but three? I asked if he was sure and he said, 'Yes.' I drove down and met him. They were floating in the creek almost like three petals of a flower or something.”

He reached out to an old college buddy who worked for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. He advised Burke not to touch the deer and put him in contact with Joshua Shields, the ODNR conservation officer for Meigs County. Shields was too busy to examine the scene until the following Monday. “It was the peak of the rut, and I knew there’d be a lot of hunters in the field,” Burke says.

He kept the find quiet and maintained a close eye on his property until Monday rolled around.
On Monday, Burke assembled his salvage team at the site, a farm where he and his father built a hunting lodge in 1974 and where they’ve hunted ever since.

After examining the scene, which included extensive evidence of the bucks’ battle royale, Officer Shields determined the find was legit, and the salvage operation began.

The best way to untangle the pileup, Burke and Shields decided, was to sever the heads of two of the deer and remove their bodies; then the third deer would be removed intact, with the racks of the first two bucks still locked in its antlers.

“All three of the bodies were 200 pounds plus,” Burke says. “No way were we going to move them all together, and my top priority was to preserve the integrity of the lock.”

Burke’s friend Chris Davis waded into the water and zip-tied the antlers together as a precaution.

Davis prepared to begin sawing as Burke and Shields watched.

After removing the bodies of the first two deer, Burke and Shields (joined by logger Bobby Thompson, left, and forester Jason Good, right) waited for Davis to pull the last buck—with the heads of its rivals still attached—from the creek.

As Davis lifted the mass of horns above the water, the crew got their first inkling of just how remarkable a find this was.

“I knew it was something special, but I don’t think any of us knew how special until we lifted them out of the water,” Good says. “It was hard to judge the racks all tangled up under water; I thought they were three scrawny deer locked together. When they came up out of the water it made the hair on back of my neck stand up again. Holy cow!”

The combatants turned out to be an 11-pointer, a 10-pointer and a 7-pointer with an eighth broken tine.

Official Boone & Crockett scorer Jack Satterfield took on the daunting task of putting together a green score for the three intertwined racks. All together they tallied more than 400 inches of bone.

The 11-pointer (whose main beam is in the foreground here) green scored 168 4/8 gross, 156 0/8 net. The 10-pointer grossed 138 4/8, and netted 136 2/8 green, while the 7-pointer grossed 119 0/8 and netted 108 1/8.

So what happened? Burke, who has probably spent more time than anyone poring over the puzzle of intertwined beams and tines, has a theory.

“Looking at the horns, it looks like the 7- and the 11-pointer were battling and only one side of their horns were locked,” he says. “Then the 10-pointer came in on the opposite side, and his main beam went around the base of each one of the other two deer’s antlers and his tines went up on the inside of their beams and locked them all three together.”

Damage to the creek bank and gouge marks on trees suggest the bucks locked up 50 yards downstream, then struggled together along the bank—half in and half out of the shallow water—until one of the bucks toppled into the deep hole where the deer were found.

“I think one deer hit that hole and pulled the other deer into the water and they all drowned together,” Burke says. “Drowning was probably a good thing. The coyotes would have been on them in no time. I imagine they died full force, adrenaline flowing, battling it out.”

“But there’s also a certain sadness that the lives of three nice bucks just ended like that. Three deer that any hunter would have put on the wall and told stories about.”

A find at once so gruesome and awe-inspiring provokes the imagination of even the most objective wildlife observers. It vividly illustrates the intensity of the drive behind the whitetail rut, and reminds us just how high are the stakes, how intense the drive to breed for mature bucks.

Wildlife biologists are taught that anthropomorphism—endowing the animals they study with human qualities—is not good science. Yet, says Mike Tonkovich, deer project leader for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, “I can’t help wondering what was that third buck thinking? Whatever possessed him to get engaged when the two were already entangled?”

It’s a thought that Burke echoes. “Three alpha bucks coming together at once, I just can’t imagine how brutal that must have been,” he says.

“It’s kind of neat to see evolution right there in front of you,” says Tonkovich. “This is Darwin stuff, what we learned in biology 101—those that are strongest and smartest will do the breeding. In today’s deer management world, our interest is in population dynamics or growing big bucks and age structures and so forth, but this takes you back to the basics of deer behavior and, even more simply, evolution and Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

"What you’re seeing here is one buck trying to convince another that I need to pass my genes on and I’m gonna do what it takes to make sure it happens. This is a manifestation of that drive.”

It’s also a reminder that sometimes the strongest don’t survive.

“They didn’t plan this very well, that’s for sure,” the biologist notes. “But that also adds some realism to the whole thing—that in spite of the sophistication of evolution there are hiccups that cause the system to fall apart.”

“I guess it shows us how brutal Mother Nature can be," says Burke. "It’s no Bambi story.”