Walter Dowdle got to the hunting club late but still had enough time to see the buck of a lifetime and squeeze off a shot.

He may not be able to top this giant buck, his best in 38 years of chasing deer. The mainframe 12-point has a few extra stickers and some non-scoring points that push the wide Alabama buck to eye-popping proportions. Dowdle told the Alexander City Outlook that if you counted the ones you can hang a ring on, it has 22 points. Those “ring points” may not all be scorable, of course, so the final B&C total has yet to be seen.
Dowdle switched his ammo at the last second for that he hoped “would do the most damage” on the big bruiser, he told the newspaper. He was shooting a custom Remington .300 with a 165-grain short mag bullet.
“I dropped him through both shoulders, but I still didn’t have any idea how big he was,” Dowdle said. “I called a friend of mine that was hunting with me and told him, ‘I think I may need some help.’”
As he approached the deer, Dowdle said he could only see one side of the antlers sticking up.
“When I got up closer, I was just shocked,” Dowdle said. “I lifted the head, and I just started jumping and hollering. I knew it was better than anything I had ever shot. Matter of fact, it is the biggest we have ever killed at the hunting club.”
Read the full account here in the Alexander City Outlook.