Robert Denninger was in a tree saddle the afternoon of October 23 when he spotted a deer in a creek bed about 75 yards away. He’d accessed the Oklahoma public hunting area by kayak, paddling up a creek to a remote spot that he’d pinpointed the previous day.
“I decided to slide down quietly with my bow and get a better look at the deer in the creek,” Denninger tells Outdoor Life. “When I got close to the creek I spotted two big mature bucks fighting and they were locked up tight by their antlers.”
He knew he was witnessing an epic outdoor event and he shot video of the fight on his phone.
“The bucks were plowing into each other and into the creek bank,” says Denninger, a 42-year-old retiree from Dallas. “Mud was flying everywhere. My mind was racing – would attempting to harvest these bucks be a hunter’s gift or a violation of fair chase?”
It was clear the bucks were not able to separate their antlers. Denninger struggled with what to do and pondered if it would be ethical and legal to shoot the larger of the two bucks, which was a 12-pointer with a typical rack. He recalled a friend telling him a story of once finding a pair of locked-antler bucks dead in a pond. They had been killed and half eaten by coyotes.
Before deciding what to do, Denninger called a game warden.
“I spoke with a local [Oklahoma] Game Warden who assured me he didn’t have any on-call vet who could have come out to sedate the animals and attempt a safe unlocking,” Denninger says.
“The thought of letting ‘nature run its course’ and coming back in the following days to spook a pack of coyotes off two rotten carcasses or trying my best to put an ethical kill on these animals were what I believed my choices were,” he explains. “I decided to shoot the 12-pointer.”
His first arrow was deflected by brush. But his second arrow found the deer’s heart, and it quickly died.
“I watched to see if the eight point could free himself, but he only struggled more, barely able to move the weight of the harvested 12-pointer,” the bowhunter says.
Denninger had no way of freeing the deer, so he decided to shoot the second buck with his bow. Even when both deer were dead, it was impossible to unlock their antlers.
That’s when he called a couple younger buddies, who eventually arrived with a wheeled wagon.
“We tried to unlock their racks many times, and were unable to,” Denninger says. “We field dressed them. But it was a rugged haul to get the two bucks out, taking well over three hours to get them to a truck and out of the woods. It was almost midnight [by the time we were done].”
He called his Texas friend and taxidermist Dustin Moon and told him about the locked-antler bucks and his hunting tale.
“Dustin and his wife Stephanie of New Story Taxidermy drove five hours (on their sixth wedding anniversary) to where I was so they could see the bucks and help my deer processor get their antlers unlocked.”
Eventually they succeeded and the deer were separated. They will be mounted, though Denninger doesn’t know if he’ll have them in a locked-horn mount or separate mounts.
The 12-pointer is believed to be 7.5 years old and has a rough green score of 152 inches. It’s the biggest buck Denninger has taken during his dedicated bowhunting career. The 8-pointer is thought to be 5.5 years old and scores 132 inches. Both bucks have typical racks.
“I think what I did was the most ethical thing I could have done with my two Oklahoma buck tags, especially considering the alternative of having them suffer and die in their struggle, or have coyotes kill them.”