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GARY AND THE BEAST |
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will be text in this box talking about you and your award winning bucks...............
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Gary Bennett and his award winning bucks |
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"BIG BUCKS ARE WHERE YOU FIND THEM" |
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But the old adage, "Big bucks are where you find them," couldn't be more true than in the case of one of the largest and most impressive racks of all time, which was worn by a deer bagged by 16-year-old Hill Gould in the fall of 1910. In October of that year, twin brothers Eldon and Hill, along with their good friend, Leonard Kennison, decided to spend a week hunting in the wilderness surrounding their hometown of Grand Lake Stream. Though all three boys were only in their mid-teens at the time, they were already used to the hardships and trials of the day. Their camp that season would be at the Bear's Den, located along the Little River connecting Grand Lake and Big Lake. On their third afternoon, while still-hunting along the edge of a cedar and tag alder swamp, Hill spotted a large shape in the distant brush. At first, he thought the huge animal had to be a moose, and, since moose were legal game, he quickly raised his Winchester .38/55 and fired. His single shot was true, and the huge animal went down with a crash. But when the young man reached the spot, |
he
was surprised to find that, instead of a moose, he had shot a tremendous
whitetail! Curiously, the antlers of the massive buck were webbed, an
abnormality that had added to the hunter's initial impression of a moose
in the brush.
It
was late in the day, so after field-dressing the monster, Hill returned to
camp. The next morning, the three youths dragged the carcass to the shore
of the nearby river. They loaded it into a borrowed canoe and floated it
down to Grand Lake Stream. Retrieving the buck turned out to be an all-day
job, and it was well after dark before the meat was finally quartered and
divided. No scales were available, so no actual record exists of the
animal's weight. But later accounts (somewhat confirmed by old newspaper
photos) put the buck's weight in excess of 400 pounds! |
get
the head of his prize mounted. So he sold it
for the sum of $10 to a local guide and outfitter, Frank Ball, who did
have the head mounted, an undertaking not all that common or easy around
the turn of the century. For several years, it hung in Ball's hunting
lodge in Grand Lake Stream. Sometime around 1920, Ball sold it - this time
for $200 - to a sportsman who was possibly one of his clients. From that
point, and for whatever reason, over the next 50 years the magnificent
head disappeared. Stories abound of its whereabouts during that period,
but none can be completely confirmed. Gould's
deer finally resurfaced around 1980. It was found lying in a pile of
rubble in the corner of a garage being cleaned out in nearby Hancock
County. The story goes that the elderly lady who owned the garage gave no
information about why one of the largest deer heads in the world was lying
in a trash pile, and she gave it to the worker doing the cleaning for her.
Today,
the
Gould head is the property
of Dr. Chuck Arnold, the well-known antler collector. It has been
remounted and, as the accompanying photo attests, is certainly one of the
most impressive |
sets
of antlers in existence. The antlers have a total of 57 scorable points
with incredible webbing between the points on both main beams. As a result
of this unusual characteristic, beam circumferences run to a maximum of
more than 12 inches. The final BTR score of 258 5/8, which includes more
than 70 inches of irregular growth, ranks the Hill Gould buck No. 8 in the
centerfire rifle/irregular category of "Buckmasters Whitetail Trophy
Records" (1999). A replica of the Hill Gould "moose" may be
seen at Whitetail World in Clarksville, Ark.
-Article compliments
of buckmasters.com |
