Las Raices Ranch

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The truly amazing story this year really isn't how much the deer that I took grew from last year. The deer that scored ~230 and was taken by my father had a much bigger hill to climb.

He was first a "standout" in 2003-2004 as a 4 year old basic 10 with some trash. The jump from 4-5 was almost comical. He didn't even look real. His beams were super long and heavy with big tall thick points. With a monster frame and just a few abnormal inches the deer scored nearly 200" as a 5 year old. At 6 he carried even more mass and frame, lost a little point length and some abnormal inches, but scored probably about the same.

As the 2006-2007 season approached, we were excited to see what the deer would look like, but apprehensive because of the horrible drought conditions. Horrified as a word to describe us when we saw the deer would have been an understatement. At 7 he had many more abnormal points on his right beam, with a nice set of double row points, but his left side was the problem. It had a G-1 with several splits, and then an 18" long spike. The deer looked sick. We decided since there wasn't anything that any of us could do, he would be left until the next year. The deer was seen late that season and appeared to have gotten better. He didn't look nearly as bad as he had 4 months earlier.

You know the rest. The deer that had a spike on his left side last year improved to his largest score this year with the rain and lack of illness.

When his skull was boiled we made an interesting discovery. The 4th top molar from the front on his right side was broken in half and had absessed then healed over. He was very lucky to live past even his 6th year.

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Here are pictures from 2003-2004, 2004-2005, 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 (spike year). These pictures, combined with the others at the top give his progression from a 4 (when we first noticed him) to 8 year old .

Happy Hunting!