When Brent Wiesenburger set out to hunt on Saturday morning, he dressed knowing that he\u2019d be sitting in a ground blind with a portable heater, which meant thin layers and no heavy coat. After all, comfort was the last thing on his mind. The 52-year-old hunter had been chasing the most unique whitetail buck he\u2019d ever seen since South Dakota\u2019s archery opener in mid-September. This weekend, he was pulling out all the stops on a rifle hunt.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t just a heavy-beamed typical whitetail, or even a nontypical with extra trash hanging off the sides. This buck had one slightly palmated 6-point antler on his right side and what can only be described as a swollen moose paddle on his left. The buck was so out of the ordinary that Wiesenburger barely told any of his buddies about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love sharing pictures with all my buddies back home,\u201d he tells Outdoor Life<\/em>. \u201cWe all sit together during opening weekend and share pics and tell stories, but I\u2019ve been so secretive this fall. And they\u2019re all like \u2018Oh Brent, you\u2019ve got a big one up there, don\u2019t ya?\u2019 And I\u2019ve been like \u2018Ehh, he\u2019s not that big, but he\u2019s different.\u2019 And they ask to see a picture, and I tell them nope, I can\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Wiesenburger started seeing the buck on trail camera this summer. He manages a property in north-central South Dakota for optimal whitetail hunting, and this buck showed up for the first time in early summer. Wiesenburger\u2019s background in agriculture lends well to carefully maintaining food plots, selective cutting in cedar and spruce stands, and generally turning the 600 acres of CRP land into a deer paradise. (Much to the excitement of the landowner, an avid upland bird hunter, this work also turns the land into pheasant paradise.) <\/p>\n On Nov. 18, he dressed light and went out to the ground blind nearly two hours before first light. He turned on his Buddy Heater, which was attached to a 20-pound propane tank. <\/p>\n \u201cThe heater sounded funny, like it was burning weird. So I turned it off and clicked it back on again, and it flared up a little bit. So I turned it off again, and turned the propane tank off. But I still heard some hissing. So I decided to let it air out, and I started getting my gun ready and tripod set up, just getting situated,\u201d Wiesenburger tells Outdoor Life<\/em>. \u201cThen I reached over and figured, before I turned the propane tank back on, I wanted to clear any gas that might have been there. I didn\u2019t realize this, but a small propane tank was still in the heater from last season, and it must have still had some gas in it that was leaking out of the valve. Well, the whole inside of the deer blind turned into a big fireball. It blew up.\u201d<\/p>\n Wiesenburger tried to blow the fire out, but the Buddy Heater wouldn\u2019t extinguish. He unzipped the deer blind and threw the Buddy Heater outside. He tried to stomp it out with dirt from the field. When that didn\u2019t work, he carefully dragged the contraption down to a small pond, broke the ice, and tossed it in the water. <\/p>\n \u201cI got back to my stand and realized there wouldn\u2019t be a deer within 500 yards of this blind,\u201d Wiesenburger chuckles. \u201cIt still smells like burnt plastic.\u201d<\/p>\n He lasted until about 45 minutes past first light before he started to really regret his choice of clothing for the morning. The temperature had dropped into the high teens overnight, and the sun was just barely up. Wiesenburger decided to make a break for the tower blind across the shelter belt, where he knew he had another heater\u2014one without a malfunctioning propane tank.<\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t in there 30 minutes when this buck and another came from the south,\u201d Wiesenburger says. \u201cHe stepped into the CRP clearing, 100 yards away. So I shot. It was surreal. I tried to compose a text message to my wife and I couldn\u2019t even type, I was shaking so bad.\u201d<\/p>\n Once Wiesenburger could investigate the buck\u2019s strange baseball mitt of an antler, he realized it was littered with small pores and was lighter than it looked. (The buck did walk around with his head tilted left under the weight, a tendency that his taxidermist will be replicating in the shoulder mount.) The buck also had a large tumor on its chest in the trail camera photos which had since ruptured, leaving behind a gruesome wound that was leaking fluid. <\/p>\n Having this buck on the ground meant that Wiesenburger could finally send pictures to his friends, which he\u2019d been dying to do since before the season started. <\/p>\n \u201cThey were like \u2018Where are you at, we\u2019re coming to find you,’\u201d he says. \u201cThey couldn\u2019t wait to see it either. That made it pretty special.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"paddle-antlered](\"https:\/\/www.outdoorlife.com\/uploads\/2023\/11\/21\/brent_wiesenburger_buck_side_view.jpg?auto=webp&optimize=high&width=100\")