But teeth and thick shoulders weren't on Barnes' mind as he stood over the buck. "Pictures don't do it justice," he said. "You've just gotta grab hold of it."

The buck had a 4x3 main frame rack, with four points on the left side and three on the right. The main beams were 22 and 20 3/8 inches, and the left antler had one tine that was 11 3/8 inches long, a brow tine that was 7 3/8 inches long, and five sticker points, including a drop tine 4 1/2 inches long.

The right beam was the real story, however. In addition to the three points on the main beam, it had a 6-inch brow tine, a second brow tine that measured 6 7/8 inches, and a 19 6/8-inch-long third "tine" jutting out of the antler between the base and the brow tine. That extra tine had several sticker points, and the right main beam had several more drop points -- a total of nine in all, giving the buck 20 scoreable points. The non-typical points measured a total of 59 1/8 inches. The main frame of the rack had almost 15 inches in deductions, so when Osborne and Seamster finally put away their calculator, they came up with 176 7/8.

"I've got two bucks mounted in my house that don't have the horns that he's got on one side," Mabrey said. "I've always been into deer management. I let plenty of deer go. I figure, if you shoot a buck, you ought to mount it. If you want meat, shoot does. You've got to shoot them and cull the herd if you want big bucks."

How in the world had a buck like that gone unnoticed before the morning Mabrey killed him? He and Barnes agree that no one in their hunt club had ever seen the buck, and they didn't find anyone in neighboring hunt clubs who knew about the buck.

Mabrey had chosen his stand site based on several factors. First, a big buck had been taken not far from that stand two years ago at Christmas. Second, Mabrey had seen a big buck close to that stand late one evening the previous season, and third, he felt like the stand was in a place that wouldn't draw much hunting pressure.

"If I wanted to hunt a stand anywhere on our hunt club where I felt like I could kill a deer to mount, it would be that one," he said. "We've got a lot of clubs around us that hunt with dogs, and that's one spot that doesn't seem like it gets much dog pressure. Nobody hunts there too much."