An eight-year-old boy from North Georgia may have just had the harvest of a lifetime…
And when I say the harvest of a lifetime, I think he bagged an alien.
Okay, okay, that’s a stretch, but this buck looks like it’s from Mars.
According to Field & Stream, the young hunter, Beau Pruitt, bagged a buck with a strange outgrowth of permanent velvet on his antlers.
Pruitt had been chasing the alien deer since the beginning of Georgia’s youth rifle season, when he finally took it down from a box blind on November 3rd.
His dad, Justin, told the outlet:
“He wasn’t nearly as big at first, and he still had some regular shape to his antlers.
You could actually see a few points in his antlers in the first few years. But this year the antlers became so large that [they] covered his eyes.”
In the pictures, you can see that the engulfed antlers look more like horns than antlers, with layers of hardened velvet.
Luckily enough, this isn’t some kinda extraterrestrial deer, as a Georgia based biologist said this is a condition called cryptorchids.
The condition occurs when the deer’s testicles don’t descend and fully develop, which throws the testosterone levels off. Testosterone levels and antler growth go hand in hand, which ultimately results in deer with this condition growing insane looking antlers.
The National Deer Association says that deer with cryptorchids are also known as cactus bucks, and don’t participate in normal rutting behavior.
They don’t make rubs, scrapes, and their necks don’t swell up like normal bucks. They also can’t reproduce, and they never shed their antlers.
On top of Beau’s wild harvest, Justin said that this was his son’s first ever buck, too:
“The shot was a little far back, so we backed out and found him the next day. Beau was super excited when we walked up on it. He says he’s going to hang the mount next to his football, baseball, and basketball trophies.”
Helluva first buck.
