Anthony Faus of East Berlin, Pennsylvania, arrowed a monster buck with a crossbow on Oct. 15, 2022. He tagged the 22-point non-typical giant in Adams County near the Maryland state line. He shunned publicity, however, and his trophy went largely unrecognized until now.
That all changed last month when Faus’ friend offered to take the rack to a Pennsylvania Game Commission scoring event in Harrisburg. The buck was measured there and officially scored 228 3/8 inches, according to GoErie, making it the new No. 2 non-typical archery buck in the Pennsylvania record book. Faus’ deer is also the fourth largest buck ever recorded in the state—regardless of method of take.
“It’s one of the most impressive racks I’ve seen in my 15 years of being an official scorer,” Bob D’Angelo, who coordinates the state’s Big Game Scoring Program and is an Official Boone & Crockett Club scorer, told Outdoor Life.
D’Angelo told reporters he was grateful that Faus’ friend brought the antlers in to be officially scored. The animal deserved to be recognized, he said, as it was only a fraction of an inch short of the state’s number-one archery buck. The Pennsylvania state-record archery buck was harvested in 2016 by Eric Carns in Clearfield County, and scored 228 6/8 inches.
“Some people will go to all extremes to get it scored and want their photos taken with it and the notoriety that goes with it,” D’Angelo said. “And then you get something like this where the guy wasn’t even going to get it scored.”
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Faus’ buck has a 26 7/8 inch outside spread, with an inside width of 18 4/8 inches, and a dozen of its 22 points were deemed abnormal by the scorers. The buck’s 14-inch-long G2 was incredible, according to D’Angelo. And he said the antler bases—both of which had circumferences measuring more than five inches—were some of the largest he’s ever seen in all his time scoring whitetails.
PGC division chief Todd Holmes, who’s a certified scorer for Boone and Crockett, also helped measure Faus’ monster buck.
“I’ve guided in the Midwest a few years, and I got to hold some impressive sets of antlers,” Holmes told GoErie. “But that was the biggest one I’ve ever held in my hands.”