Brooke Faulconer knew she had shot a buck, but she didn’t realize until she reached the downed animal Sunday that it was such a whopper specimen of a mature whitetail. The 19-year-old from Beaverdam said: “I saw horns when I shot at it, but I didn’t see that much horns!”

The deer, a nine-pointer, had 21-inch-wide antlers, but the most amazing attribute was the mass in those antlers. Their bases had 6 1/8 inches circumference.The deer was measured using the Boone & Crockett Club’s scoring system. Along with an animal’s body weight, these evaluations are a way of tracking hunter and landowner success in managing for mature, high-quality deer. The system assesses the length of the main antler beams, length of each tine, circumference at the bases and between each tine, and width. Her buck measured a rough score of 158 inches.

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