Antler Project... Tribute To Double Trouble

First off let me say that this project is a learning experience, but is also a family project.
This deer that I am trying to replicate has given our family a lot of extreme joy and excitement over the years. Three seasons of trail cam pics/ videos, 3 sheds, and now my great nephew has harvested the deer. The emotional investment that I and my 10 and 12 year old son had/have in this buck will last a lifetime. Hard to explain to someone who doesn't love deer and hunting. Many who hunt won't even understand it. For the last three years we have been blessed to have been able to live our own real life episode of "Drury Outdoors" or "Monster Bucks" or any other "unbelievable TV show where they have multiple years of footage of a buck before they harvest them. God is great!

Pics and more to follow.

 

Why call him Double Trouble? In 2020 he had 2 big "inside leaners". In 2019 he had a small leaner on the inside of the right antler. In 2021 he only grew the left inside leaner and it was much smaller. In 2019 my boy named him Curly brow. I speculated that Curly Brow might have grown into Double Trouble during the 2020 season from trail cam pics, but thought surely not.


This is Curly Brow in 2019. He scored roughly about 147 after we found his left shed.



If you look hard you can see the small inside leaner on the right beam. Right beside the G3.

 

Here are pics from 2020. Was there any way that Curly Brow had exploded into Double Trouble??? Could he have went from one small inside leaner to two?




Look inside the left G3 there is a matching "inside leaner".
Same on the inside of the right antler.

 

The sheds confirmed my suspicion that Curly Brow was now Double Trouble!

Curly Brows shed from 2019. Followed by Double Troubles 2020 shed. We drove ourselves insane for two and a half months looking for the right side shed from DT.....

 

Finally we did the impossible and found the right side!!!! He had busted off both inside leaners and almost lost the whole beam on the right!

In the one year he jumped from 147" Curly Brow to 198 7/8" estimated Double Trouble.

 

So I tried to post this for several weeks. Every time I tried I would just get all emotional. I am super happy that my great nephew got him. He is still in the family. My boys got to see him hold him and help butcher him. We are working on making a replica of him and the sheds this winter. We scored him at 184 and change.
I am not sad or upset we didn't get him. Not in the slightest. It is more like losing a good friend. My boys and I had NOT totally obsessed about him. We knew there was next to zero chance we would get him. I honestly started hoping for another set of sheds and one more year. Just for the joy on my boys faces and the sound of pure joy and excitement when they found the sheds and every card pull. This deer even though never seen by them was a pure family experience. We spent hours riding to check cams and hours sorting through pictures. For people who don't hunt deer they will never understand just how cherished all of these memories will be for all of us as a family.

I told a guy the other day who farms a lot but " just doesn't get it"(Those were his words about deer hunting. ) I said I could have $10,000,000 to spend, but I can't buy that deer. He is out there, but may disappear. All the money in the world can't buy a tag filled with him or even another shed antler off of him.

We may never experience this type of footage and sheds off of a buck again. It has been an awesome blessing to share in this with my kids. I still get tears when I think that we won't be getting DT on camera anymore. All I can say is that God is great and hope he blesses us with another DT again.

 

This is from Missouri.
Thanks for the kind words.

 

So now begins the next journey.
First coat of dragon skin.

 

The second coat of yellow wasn’t very yellow. It didn’t cover the red up very well. Yellow must be less concentrated. But the blue covered it all up pretty good for a 3rd coat.

 

After a roll of tape and a lot of frustrating paper cutting……

 

Yep that is my goal. Massively time consuming. Of course I am learning as I go. So it’s not like I have a process that I can do in my sleep.
Trying to make a replica for my boys. And I am going to try to replicate the sheds, then add the broken leaners back on the replicas. This way I can give my great nephew a set with the leaners and we can have the rack that he wore when he was shot.

 

I did it in fiberglass mat and resin.

 

Well here she is. First ever replica. Not to shabby. Good learning experience. This stuff is pretty expensive. Dragon Skin 10 and smooth cast 300. Figured I better do this on one I really wanted to replicate. To expensive to do dinks just to learn. Plus I think a huge one throws a lot more kinks in to the process.

 

it did have one small dish at the cut seam between the G1 and G2. The seam was alimost non existent in most places. What shows a seam and the dished in spot can easily be fixed. Still want to improve.