An Undiscovered Trophy

Back in 1961, Lavonne Bucey-Bredehoeft was only 12 years old when she shot what was to become the 2nd Award for a nontypical mule deer, yet it took 41 years for her incredible accomplishment to be acknowledged.

"My father, George R. Bucey, got me started hunting when I was a little girl," Lavonne recalls. "Dad wanted to have all boys, so for birthdays and Christmas, I got rifles and pocket knives, just like my brother, Erich.

"So I grew up in Higginsville, Missouri, being a hunter, but mostly for small game--rabbits, squirrels, that sort of thing. But by the time I was 12, Dad decided I was ready for bigger things. He had a friend who owned a 30,000-acre ranch out near Newcastle, Wyoming. That's where Dad would go to hunt mule deer."

For her first big game hunt, her father let Lavonne use the same rifle he had shot his first deer with, a war surplus Model 1903 Springfield .30-06 bolt action, with military sights.

"Dad took my brother in one direction, and Bob, the rancher's son-in-law who lived on the property, was charged with the dubious chore of taking me, little 12-year-old Lavonne, out on her first big game hunt. Little did they realize that this would end up being to my advantage," Lavonne smiled.

"It was about 10 o'clock in the morning when we came to the edge of a wooded area. And there he was. The rack was just..." she pauses, remembering the sight of what would prove years later to be a record-book nontypical mule deer

"Growing up in Missouri, I had seen plenty of whitetail but never a mule deer--and certainly never a deer like this. But being a 12-year-old kid, you just naturally wait for the adult you're hunting with to say it was okay to shoot. When I looked at Bob, he just silently mouthed, 'Shoot.' So I took aim and shot."

The deer stumbled. Lavonne knew her shot had hit its mark, but the buck suddenly bolted and ran over a small hill. Lavonne and Bob rushed to the crest of the hill just in time to see the deer drop behind a log. As she and Bob approached, Lavonne saw that she had indeed made a one-shot kill. The deer was dead. But they quickly realized it wasn't just any deer.

Back home, they tried to get the deer scored, but the measurer would not believe her father when he described the rack, let alone the fact that his 12-year-old daughter had shot such an unusual mule deer. So no one never came to the house to see the animal. Eventually the mounted head was hung in her father's house, and there it stayed for 41 years without being measured. "Growing up, Dad would tell people the story of my deer, but no one would believe him," says Lavonne.

And that is where the story might have ended, had it not again been for the influence of her father. Four years ago, he introduced his daughter to woodcarving, and in one of her classes, the assignment was to carve two mule deer.

Lavonne took the only photo she had of a mule deer--the one she had shot so many years ago--to ask her instructor, well-known animal carver Kirt Curtis, if she could use it as a model. When he saw the photo, Curtis was awestruck. "How did it score?" he asked. After the carving was done, everyone else asked the same question.

Finally, Lavonne decided to get the answer. She phoned B&C measurer Dale Ream and described the rack as having "...39 points that you could hang a ring off of. That's how our family always referred to it in whenever trying to tell someone about it."

She was asked to bring the mounted head to Kansas City, where Dale immediately became a believer. It took three hours to score the buck. He totaled it up several times to be sure he was right.

At the 2004 Awards Ceremony, Lavonne's buck was officially recognized with a 2nd Award for nontypical mulies. As proud as she was, there was an even prouder ex-Marine drill sergeant, with his finely waxed mustache and neatly trimmed beard, sitting in the audience, watching his daughter with just a little mist in his eyes.

"You know," Lavonne told me, "I never realized it until recently, but Bob actually could have taken that deer himself. After all, I was just a 12-year-old girl. But, instead, he let me shoot the deer. What an incredible display of sportsmanship."