On Nov. 4, Tyson Raymer went deer hunting with his girlfriend on his family’s farm near Disley, Saskatchewan. Their day took a wild and gruesome turn, however, when the 24-year-old Canadian hunter spotted a 10-point whitetail buck carrying around the detached head of another 8-point. He took advantage of the two-for-one special and ended their hunt with a pair of intertwined trophies.
Raymer and his girlfriend had set up that morning in some tall grass on the edge of a rolling field. They went out expecting they’d tag a doe, or maybe a decent buck. At one point, Raymer started rattling, and then he watched as a two-headed buck stepped out and walked toward him.
“I put my binoculars on him and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” Raymer tells Outdoor Life. “It was a nice buck, with just the head of another good buck hanging off his rack.”
Raymer soon lost sight of the buck and decided to make a stalk. The field they were watching had rolling terrain, and the wind was in their favor. He was also carrying a .50 caliber muzzleloader, so he needed to close the distance if he wanted to get a shot off.
“I stalked to about 80 yards of him and could just see him on the other side of a hill in the field,” Raymer says. “Finally, he stepped out, I fired, he ran a bit, and fell dead. When I got up close to the deer it was incredible to see.”
Looking down at the 10-point buck, he saw that the 8-point’s head was securely intertwined in its rack.
“I’m sure they’d been fighting,” Raymer says. “The buck I shot had won the battle, and the 8-pointer died.”
Both were mature bucks with thick racks. Raymer thinks the 8-pointer might have been the older buck, as its antlers were even thicker than the 10-point’s.
“I’d like to think that the 10-pointer broke the 8-pointer’s neck during their fight,” he says. “Then over the time he was dragging the other deer around, coyotes and other predators could have picked at the dead deer until its head detached from its body.”
Raymer says the 10-pointer he shot seemed to get around normally, as he watched it run after it’d been shot. He also remembers a family member telling him a week prior that they’d seen a good buck dragging around a dead buck, and that the two appeared to be completely locked up.
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“I’m sure it was the same buck,” Raymer says. “When we skinned the 10-pointer he was very lean, almost no fat at all—very unlike the other mature bucks we get. He likely had trouble feeding and that’s why he’d gotten so skinny.”
He says he plans to get the bucks mounted with their racks still intertwined, but he hasn’t decided how he’ll display them. He’s also still looking for the right taxidermist. Until then, he’s using zip ties to keep the racks the way he found them.
“It’s something I’ve never seen, and probably never will again.”