Goliath, the Largest Mule Deer Sheds Ever Found

Earlier this week F&S posted a story on the “Highest Scoring Muley Shed of All Time,” a massive matched set recently dropped by a now-famous Colorado Springs mule deer buck dubbed “Goliath” or “Double Beam.” A glance at the North American Shed Hunters Club record-setting rack leaves you wondering, “How do you score those things?”

The answer is, watch this video. F&S had a camera rolling as NASHC certified measurer Ron Newman put a tape on these incredible antlers. Learn more about scoring mule deer here.

This huge Colorado Springs mule deer lived in suburban back yards and mule deer junkies have speculated about how high this freakish rack might score, with guesses ranging from 300 to no more than 230. The buck—which has been dubbed “Goliath,” “Double-Beam” and “Elvis”—made it through last hunting season, and since then a small army of shed hunters have been watching him almost 24/7.

With everyone’s eyes focused on the same prize, the potential for conflict was high. But Wendland, the hunter who eventually did find the sheds says the competition remained friendly.

“Everyone in the shed hunting world knows that if you find it, it’s yours,” he says. The topic did come up on the shed Internet forums. “Probably our worst fear was three people would see them drop, and then there’s gonna be all kinds of drama. Or what if he drops only one and carries the other around for five days, and now tons of people are lined up on the road watching him. But my experience with big animals is that usually both will drop within two or three hundred yards of each other. And that’s what happened here.”

On St. Patrick’s Day evening, Wendland located him in the evening. Goliath was still carrying both antlers. The next day, Wendland got a late start on his rounds, and didn’t find the buck until around 11:30 a.m.. The big muley had dropped both antlers. He searched for three hours, backtracking to where he’d sighted the buck the night before, but found nothing—except a half-dozen other shed hunters looking for the same antlers.

The mood, he says, was friendly but anxious. “We were excited. We all just wanted to see them. We didn’t want them to drop in someone’s yard and they just put them in the garage and nobody sees them again. It was kind of a hopeless feeling, thinking that could happen.”

“It was my last option spot,” he recalls. “I came up a pretty steep hill, and with my naked eye spotted the first one about a hundred yards away. I actually looked over it once, because it looked like brush sticking out of the grass. But I knew without a doubt it was his right side. My heart rate was going absolutely nuts; walking up to something like that I just couldn’t believe it. I thought, ‘Wow, I found one side, and that’s really all I want.’”

Wendland headed back to his vehicle, trying futilely to conceal the big shed under his jacket.

After stowing it safely, he headed out again. “I thought, ‘Well, he’s on a trail’—so I headed back to the trail and went another 300 yards before I spotted the second one about 20 yards away at the top of a hill.”