Here's Brent Mabrey with the mount of his state record, with its incredible "double-beam" right side. Photo by Dan Kibler.

It never entered Brent Mabrey's mind when he went hunting last Sept. 26 that anything really special might happen -- beyond the possibility that he might get to kill a deer with a bow for the first time.

He was really just hoping to get a second chance on a buck that he'd missed the previous evening by picking the wrong sight pin in the fading light and sending an arrow whizzing over its back.

"The thought of killing a record-book deer was never in my head the whole time that morning," admitted Mabrey, a Roanoke Rapids native who had killed plenty of deer with a gun but had only taken up archery hunting in time for the 2005 season.

But the deer he arrowed just after daylight that morning, on hunt club land in Halifax County, was certainly a record-book deer in every respect. It qualified easily for the Pope and Young Club's all-time record book, and when the tape measure was finally put aside, it was the biggest buck ever taken in North Carolina by a bowhunter.

At least the biggest buck with a rack that, shall we say, defines the essence of the word "non-typical."

Mabrey's buck, sporting a "third beam" and sticker points everywhere, was the biggest non-typical ever killed with a bow and arrow in the Tar Heel State. Scott Osborne and Mike Seamster, wildlife biologists with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, scored the buck in early December, and the numbers were astonishing.

Twenty-one scoreable points.

A 19 6/8-inch inside spread.

Brow tines over 6 inches long and a third brow tine on one antler that pushed 7 inches. One tine that was 11 3/8 inches long.

An enormous non-typical point curving out of the right antler, between the base and the brow tine, that measured almost 20 inches long.

A net non-typical Boone and Crockett score of 176 7/8 points, more than 10 inches larger than the buck that formerly held the state record, a Forsyth County buck killed in 1998 by Bill Froelich of Mocksville that scored 166 1/8.

"If I'd known how big he was when I first saw him, I don't believe I could have drawn my bow back to shoot him," Mabrey said.

Fortunately, Mabrey's attention was focused on another buck almost until the moment that he let fly the arrow that killed his once-in-a-lifetime trophy. (Continued)

He had gotten in his stand -- an API Grand Slam climber -- by 5:30 a.m., where he waited 20 feet above a fenceline looking into a pasture where he had a pile of corn. When it finally cracked dawn and Mabrey could see, he made out the outline of an 8-point buck feeding in the corn pile, 20 yards away.

Mabrey had been hoping that the 7-point buck he'd missed the night before might return, but here was one even bigger, an 8-pointer he estimated at about 16 inches wide.

He picked up his bow and stood up, getting ready to shoot the 8-pointer, when he heard a deer coming from behind him, to his left side. The second deer was coming from a 30-yard-wide border of trees between two pastures, with a lane running through the middle of it.

The second buck jumped the pasture fence and stopped just inside, watching the 8-pointer, which was obviously worried by the intruder. And probably for good reason: Mabrey could easily see that the second deer was a much bigger buck.