Steve Hoaglund is now in first place in Buck’s Big Buck contest in the antler spread division; his buck’s antlers have a gap of 21½ inches between them. Hoagland’s deer weighed in at a hefty 214 pounds, but that is nowhere close to Don Lehto’s 252.8-pound leader signifying the biggest buck.
Right about now Seth Williams is pulling on his buck’s antlers trying to get them to spread just a little bit wider apart.
Last week Williams led Buck’s Big Buck contest with a 21-inch antler spread. This week he slipped into second place behind Steve Hoaglund’s buck’s 21½-inch spread.
Williams can take some solace however. At 215.8 pounds his field dressed buck was 1.8 pounds bigger than Hoaglund’s deer. Solace, however, doesn’t win money, and first place in the antler-spread contest is half of the 405 entrant’s pot, which was $10 per entry.
That’s a lot of “dough” to give up for half an inch.
Meanwhile Don Lehto still leads with a 252.8 pound field dressed buck that will be hard to beat with only a few days left in the Minnesota firearm deer hunting season. If Lehto’s buck stays in first place, he will win a new rifle for his hunting prowess.
A lucky entrant will win the other half of the purse in a drawing held at the end of the contest.
Statewide the Department of Natural Resources reports that 118,599 deer were registered through the second weekend of the firearms season. That’s up more than 14,000 over the same period last year, an increase of 18 percent.
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