The story below is a continuation of Part 1. 

History Can’t Be Changed

Despite Duncan’s initial shock and disappointment at the bad news, he saw a positive side. It’s still true that The General is a beautiful and historic rack, and it’s still true that from 1959 to 1995, for as long as the antlers hung on the wall in the Barnhart farmhouse, and even to today — they are the biggest typical antlers a white-tailed deer ever grew.

What happened almost four decades after Barnhart found the antlers can’t be changed, and history can’t be erased. The removal of two small points diminishes neither the significance of the rack itself, nor its place in whitetail history. So Duncan wants history to recognize the unfortunate truth about the original antlers, including their alterations, yet still value their current status and historic value. The antlers, both before and after they were altered, still outrank every other buck. Deleting The General from the NASHC record book should not mean they are just another set of antlers, with no more official significance than a moth-eaten six-point hanging in an obscure rural barn somewhere in the vast expanse of white-tailed deer territory. 

Duncan also believes that the story holds a lesson for all of us, so he focuses on celebrating the General “as God grew him,” while at the same time preserving the integrity of the antlers’ ill-fated history. The General should not be forgotten based on what an unknown human did.

A New Beginning

On May 24, 2025, Duncan, his wife Christy, and prominent shed antler authority Mike Charowhas visited Barnhart’s Nebraska farmhouse and the pasture where the antlers were found. Duncan wanted to get a feel for the area and begin assembling a photographic record of the origin of the antlers. While there he spoke with Bill Saner who said, “Ben Barnhart gave me a photo of those antlers.” Saner showed the group his photo with visible sticker points on the left G-3 and the right G-2.

In Duncan’s pursuit of the truth, and with four snapshots of the antlers taken in the Barnhart farmhouse, he contacted Phil Tuttle of Antler Tech, enlisting him to use computer technology to analyze the snapshots and accurately determine how long the shaved points had been, precisely where they were located, and their exact orientation on the rack. The point on the left G-3 was determined to be 1-7/8 inches long growing from a base that is slightly wider than the length — which means it wouldn’t officially count as a point. The point on the right G-2 was 3-inches long, which must be subtracted to reduce the final net score by that measurement.

In considering his options, Duncan realized he could recreate the missing points on the original antlers but rejected that idea as a new alteration. It would be tantamount to pretending the antlers had never been altered, which would wrongly overlook what has happened. Instead, he has left the original antlers in their altered state, but is producing high-quality replica antlers that include the missing points.

He calls the famous 1959 shed antlers the “Original General,” and he calls the replicas with restored points “Original by God,” or OG. The meaning is twofold. The OG replicas accurately represent the antlers as they were originally found in Ben Barnhart’s pasture, hence, they were true to the antlers God created. The phrase “by God” also implies a pledge that the full truth of The General be openly told.

Same Buck, Two Sets of Sheds

If that’s not enough news for the year, another unexpected event happened at the Iowa Deer Classic (March 7-9, 2025). Shane Indrebo was manning the NASHC booth when he introduced himself to a woman carrying an antler that looked remarkably like it was from The General. Her name was Melissa Miller, and he asked where she got the antler.  

She replied, “After my grandparents both passed away, we found it while going through the estate process.”  Indrebo followed up, asking where it was originally found.

“In central Nebraska, near a little town called Sargent.” Sargent, in Custer County, has a population of only 500, and the entire county has just over 10,000 people. Antler enthusiasts have long wondered if any other shed antlers from The General were lying around, and here was an antler found in 1961 that might be from the same buck! She brought it to the Iowa Deer Classic to have it scored by the NASHC.

This spurred a conversation between Indrebo and Ryan Pellersels, who owned a pair of central Nebraska shed antlers found by a man named Larry Sanger. They look remarkably like Miller’s 1961 antler. Could they be from The General?

Larry Sanger was pheasant hunting a plum thicket in January 1964 and jumped a big buck with one antler on its head. As it ran, the antler dropped. He picked it up and then looked back to where the buck had been bedded and found the other.

Duncan saw an opportunity to prove the Larry Sanger shed antlers owned by Pellersels belonged to The General. He submitted bone samples from the 1964 antlers, along with samples from the 1959 sheds, to the University of California at Davis, Veterinary Genetics Laboratory. For a mere $88 and a few weeks of waiting, Duncan received a Genetic Marker Test Report on Dec. 19, 2025. Professional lab testing proved beyond doubt that the 1964 set of antlers is a 100% genetic match to The General.

It’s no surprise that five years after Barnhart found The General’s 1959 sheds, his antlers show significant decline and abnormalities. The General lived to a ripe old age, and the 1959 sheds probably represent his best year.

Whitetail history is still being made from a pair of shed antlers a buck grew 68 years ago. The story is so astonishing that Josh Duncan has begun working on a documentary movie about The General. He has chosen producers, purchased camera gear and hired a production team headed by Phil Tuttle of Antler Tech who is hard at work on the project right now. It should be completed sometime in 2026.

Conclusions

Considering all that happened in 2025, several things must be noted about The General:  

1. Even though record book rules will keep the antlers from being recognized, The General is still the largest known typical white-tailed deer ever to walk the earth. Until a bigger buck turns up, that fact can’t be denied.
2. In a 2025 online report for North American Whitetail magazine which first announced the news of the altered antlers, Dan Cole probably said it best: “Their beauty has not changed. Their eye-catching configuration and beam sweep are still there. They still are among the elite of the elite. While the alteration may disqualify The General Sheds from the record book and world record status, it does not diminish their inherent beauty and grandeur. Despite the controversy, we hope that The General will continue to be admired as one of the all-time favorites in the hunting community.”
3. Contrary to what many are tempted to believe, The General is not a fraudulent rack because fraud implies a fraudster. Only one person knows with certainty who removed the points and why, and that’s the person who did it. Maybe he did it just to give the antlers a better appearance. No evidence shows he did it for profit, or to misrepresent the antlers to gain a higher score, because the antlers were never scored until May 29, 1998 when Cabelas owned them, and Cabelas had no knowledge of the alterations. Nor do the alterations affect the ranking. The General would rank No. 1 even if the antlers had been measured before the points were removed.
4. The timing is important. The original rack was unaltered for almost four decades after it was found. Had the antlers been scored before they were altered, they would remain history’s top typical whitetail. Being scored after they were altered may disqualify them as a record, but does not diminish them. The antlers Ben Barnhart found in his pasture are still, after 67 years, the biggest typical antlers we know of that any free-ranging deer has ever grown. And Dick Idol’s conclusion in his December 1996 article is still true, “One thing’s for sure: This Nebraska buck will forever be considered among the greatest of all time.” That will remain true if (or until) someone offers an even bigger buck for scoring.
5. No real whitetail enthusiast will forget The General. And the fact that the antlers are not associated with any deer hunter as a harvest means no hunter is discredited, and no hunter is guilty of anything. One of the best things about shed antlers is that they allow the deer to be recognized rather than a hunter, which is as it should be. In this case, says Josh Duncan, “We will always be able to give credit to the Creator for growing these antlers, and the honest thing to do is to celebrate them as God’s artwork.”
6. No longer a mere investment, these antlers gave Josh Duncan a mission to get this truth out for all: “When man cuts you down, you can stand confident in the fact that YOU are an Original by God. While other people may try to diminish and destroy you, that’s not God’s intent for you. The Original by God is only a set of restored antlers, but they can speak to us and teach us God’s intent is to restore us, too. The original antlers are not what they were created to be, and we’re not what we were created to be either.” Duncan’s conviction is, “through restoration by Christ we can become what we were created to be.” 

So much happened in 2025 — the purchase of The General for $1 million, the finding of the 1995 Barnhart photos, the discovery of the 1964 sheds found by Larry Sanger, the genetic testing that proved the Sanger antlers also came from The General, the preservation of the Original General and the creation of the Original by God replicas, and Duncan’s creation of a company that is dedicated to the memory of this great deer. And in 2026, a coming documentary movie that reveals everything we know about The General.

It’s safe to say that despite the sad fact that the original 1959 antlers were altered, The General is likely to receive more honor and attention than any deer in history as the No. 1 typical antlers any whitetail ever grew, even if it’s no longer official. Instead of an epitaph for The General’s altered shed antlers, the story has new life it couldn’t have if the truth about these special antlers hadn’t been found out.

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Steve Sorensen is a longtime, award-winning contributor to Deer & Deer Hunting, and speaks frequently at sportsman’s dinners.

Read Part 1 below: