16-Point Non-Typical From Lamar County

Matt Rivers, of Newnan, killed a gnarly looking 16-point buck with his bow in Lamar County on Oct. 3.

“We don’t have any idea how to score him,” said Matt. “I’ve had people tell me 180, 190, 200.”

Matt is talking about gross inches of antler, but when it comes to a net score, there’s just no telling until an official scorer, or a committee of scorers, gets their hands on this crazy-looking rack. Matt does plan to enter his buck into GON‘s Truck-Buck contest, and we’ll let our certified P&Y scorers sweat it out at one of our scoring events to get a final score.

For now, we just celebrate a really cool and very odd-ball-looking buck that came from some family land where Matt has hunted for a number of years.

Matt Rivers, of Newnan, with his Lamar County non-typical.

“We first started getting trail-camera pictures of him in late June of 2020,” said Matt.

As bow season neared, Matt was able to move his cameras just enough to pinpoint about a 300-yard area where he felt the buck was bedded. Finally, he captured a photo of the buck on a trail leaving a thicket before dark on Wednesday, Sept. 30.

“I went in and hung a lock-on stand and just waited for the wind to get right,” said Matt.

His stand was positioned about 15 yards inside the cutover and just off the trail, which he said led to an area of freshly dropping white and water oak acorns.

The wind was right on Saturday, Oct. 3, and the buck showed up about 7:30 that evening.

“He came in at 15 yards, and I shot him,” said Matt. “He ran off 40 yards and stopped with his head down. I knew I had hit him back. I got my rangefinder on him and was able to get another shot. I hit him right in the heart, and he ran off about 50 yards, and I didn’t hear him after that.”

Matt let the deer lay for a few hours before him and his good friend Matt Epps recovered the buck and drug him out.

The 16-pointer has six points on the right and 10 on the left and had lost all its velvet.

Matt’s buck looks similar to bucks that often keep their antlers and velvet year-round and are referred to as cactus bucks and have a condition called cryptorchidism.

Antlers on cactus bucks grow in odd shapes, the velvet remains year-round, and the antlers go on growing without being shed. Generally, cactus bucks have an injury to the male parts or it occurs when one or both testes don’t descend into the scrotum of a deer. While the rack on Matt’s buck is shaped like one on a cactus buck, he assured us that all parts on his mature buck were normal.

“I’ve killed a 130 on this property but nothing ever like this,” said Matt. “Until June I had never seen this deer, unless he had a normal rack last year and had some kind of an injury to his bases that caused him to grow non-typical antlers.”

Lamar County All-Time Record Bow-Bucks