Eggers’ buck scores 190 6/8 inches

The world of antler scoring can be a fickle one.

So it goes for bowhunter Joel Eggers, whose huge Randolph County 11-point typical buck wound up with a net score of 190 6/8 inches following the mandatory 60-day drying period. Eggers said scorer Tim Walmsley of Fowler assigned the buck a gross score of 208 7/8 inches. But the rack had a major deduction for some abnormal growth at the spot where the G4 point meets the main beam. A hole in the main beam appears to have been made by a parasite.

“I don’t know if a parasite burrowed in there or what, but it wound up making more growth on the G4 than on the main beam,” Eggers said.

Agreed measurer Tim Walmsley, “When they do that, sometimes they divert the growth. He had the sheds from the year before and they were clean, so it’s not a genetic thing. It was a damn bug hole.”

In this case, growth was diverted to the G4 point at the expense of the main beam, which wound up 5 inches shorter than the other beam. Those deductions, coupled with a 5-inch abnormal point and some other minor deductions, knocked Eggers’ buck back.

Eggers had hoped for more after the buck was green-scored at 198 1/8 inches earlier this year.

“If it hadn’t been for that parasite it would have been about 200 inches,” Eggers said. “But it is what it is. There’s nothing you can change.”

Even so, Eggers’ buck is believed to be the largest typical bow kill in Illinois and is probably larger than any typical gun kill. And he plans to bring the big buck to the Illinois Deer & Turkey Classic on Sunday. There’s also a short story about his buck in the February issue of North American Whitetail. He is expected to be the magazine’s cover story in July.

“It’s a monster 10-pointer. It just had some problems,” Walmsley said. “When I held that one I got a kick out of it. And there’s not many deer I get a kick out of any more.”

We’ll have a rundown on the biggest bucks of the year later this week. No question Eggers’ buck is one of those.

Eggers said he did not shoot another buck last season after killing his 11-pointer on Oct. 23, 2007.

“I killed three does but that was about it,” he said. Not that Eggers has lost the desire to hunt big bucks. Far from it.

“I’m not going to pass up any 3 1/2-year-old deer. I’ll still shoot one of those and I’ll still get excited about it,” he said.