Youngster Rhett Boucher was playing outside while his grandpa was cutting firewood when he spotted something interesting—and it turned out to be an absolutely gigantic deadhead. The 3-year-old boy is credited with finding the whitetail deer skull and antlers on March 15, 2023. The deadhead will go down as one of the biggest wild nontypical bucks ever recorded in Ohio history.
In a Facebook video posted by the professional scorer Toby Hughes, Rhett’s father Quentin explained that the family had a history with the big buck before the surprising find. “I’ve definitely seen it before down the road in the field,” says Quentin. “It was found on our property about 300 yards off the road…In my opinion, maybe someone down the road was hunting it and shot it, and it ran and died in my field. Or, maybe it was hit by a car. It also could have died of old age. It was an old buck, and it was a pile of bones when Rhett found it.”
Quentin says they acquired the proper salvage permit to keep the deadhead. Hughes says it has 23 scoreable points with normal brow tines and a distinct “unicorn” antler on the front right. He estimates that the deer had been dead for at least a month before Rhett stumbled upon it. The right side of the antlers has 40 inches of junk and a total of 126 5/8 inches. The left side has 38 inches of abnormal points and a total of 128 5/8 inches. According to Hughes, the antlers have a total score of 276 4/8 Buckmasters.
The deadhead is exceptionally large. According to Hughes, it will go down in the Buckmasters Record Book as the sixth biggest irregular deadhead ever picked up in Ohio. The biggest-ever pickup in the U.S. was the Lionel Crissman Buck, which totaled 351 7/8 Buckmasters and was found in Mahoning County, Ohio.
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“This is the biggest wild deer I’ve ever seen. That is something,” says Hughes of the Rhett Boucher Buck. “Rhett gets all the credit for finding it. It’s going in the record book under his name.”
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