The early vote for deer of the year goes to a doe that Maxine Byrd of Ida killed Wednesday in Cleburne County.
The doe sported a fully developed 9-point rack that measured 15 inches inside the antlers and 17 inches outside. You read that right. It was a trophy hermaphrodite doe.
An antlered doe is rare enough, but it's even more unusual that the rack was fully developed and polished from rubbing.
Cory Gray, deer program leader for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, said he's seen antlered doe before but never one like this. Hermaphrodite antlers are usually small and spindly and usually keep their velvet.
"It's a unique animal," Gray said. "It's a hormone imbalance thing. The neat thing is that Ms. Byrd is a 72-year-old woman who enjoys hunting. Her son says it's her exercise, the thing that keeps her going, and then she kills a unique animal like that."
Byrd said she started hunting as a child with her father, and she continued hunting with her late husband Guy Byrd, who died in July 2009. Now she hunts with her son Terry Byrd. She usually hunts deer with a .243 rifle, but she killed the antlered doe with Terry's 7mm Magnum.
"Hunting is very important to me," Byrd said. "It's all about being with family and friends. I bowhunt, too. I sit in the stand by myself and think about things me and my husband did together. It brings back memories."
The hunt itself wasn't exceptional, Byrd said. A big buck showed up, and she shot it. The confusion came later, when Terry began skinning it. The first thing that was wrong was the scent. The "buck" didn't smell right.
"The scent was unnatural to anything I'd smelled in all the years I've harvested bucks," Terry said. "I told Mom to wash out the back of the truck, and I'll string it up on the tractor and start skinning it.
"I had my knife out, and I just froze."
Terry said he looked, and looked again. He called Maxine to have a look.
"I was very surprised," Maxine said. "It had all female parts."
That is unusual, too, Gray said.
"The ones I've seen had it all, a 'full house,'" Gray said, meaning both male and female genitalia.
Its rack is bigger than that of any buck Maxine has killed.
"I'm in another world," Maxine said. "I don't know what to think. I just wasn't expecting anything like that."
Maxine killed an 8-point buck during muzzleloader season. Even though this second deer is a doe, Maxine cannot kill another buck this year, Gray said.
"She thought she was killing a buck," Gray said, "so I figure she checked it as a buck."
Gray said the buck was between 3 1/2 and 4 1/2 years old and had probably never reproduced. Maxine said she believed it probably led an interesting life.
"I wonder what kind of life it had," she said. "I'm sure it thought it was a buck. It had tarsal glands on its legs, but it had no male features except for that."
Terry said Bass Pro Shops and Cabela's have approached Maxine about making the doe into a full body mount and displaying it at their stores in Little Rock and Rogers.
"We're discussing leasing it to them for display," Terry said. "At some point we will put it in the [Carl Garner] visitor center at Greers Ferry Dam so that everyone can be a part of it.
"This is our home, and that's a Cleburne County deer."
Sports on 11/23/2014