‘I Hadn’t Shot a Deer All Year.’ Hunter Tags Unicorn Buck in the Final Days of Muzzleloader Season

Barry Suttles Jr. is plenty familiar with an 80-acre farm outside Columbus, Ohio. It’s owned by a family friend who has allowed three generations of Suttles to hunt deer there.

“I was out just as dawn was breaking on Jan. 4, and walked to the far side of a timbered island in the middle of the farm,” Suttles 30, tells Outdoor Life. “I hadn’t shot a deer all year, and I’d have been happy just to take a fat doe.”

Still, Suttles had a few trail camera videos of a big buck that had a long, unicorn-like antler growing high from its forehead.

“I’d never seen the buck [in person] and no one I knew had during the day,” says Suttles, a food service supervisor from St. Paris, Ohio. “I just wanted to take any deer that morning, and it was my last chance of the season during the late muzzleloader [hunt].”

Suttles had a new muzzleloader but he hadn’t gotten a chance to sight it in. So he borrowed his cousin’s.

“I’d shot some deer in other years with that rifle, and my cousin, Chad Robinson was glad to loan it to me just the day before the season opened.”

Suttles jumped a doe while walking in that morning, then found a spot to sit on the ground beside a fallen tree for cover.

It was snowy out and Suttles didn’t see another deer until 8:20 a.m. He spotted movement in the woods about 100 yards away. He didn’t know if it was a buck or doe. The deer kept coming, then stopped at 70 yards while still in the timber.

“It was looking at me, and I think it saw me, maybe from a reflection on my rifle,” says Suttles, who couldn’t tell what kind of deer it was besides a legal one. I figured it was the best chance I was going to have at a deer, so I put the crosshairs on its chest and fired.”

The deer disappeared. A few seconds later Suttles saw a running deer burst out of the opposite side of the woods onto open ground, heading away.

“I thought I’d missed and if I’d had time to [reload] I’d have tried another shot as he headed off,” Suttles says of the running buck. “It’s a good thing I didn’t though. Because when I went over to the spot where the deer stood, it was lying dead in the timber.”

The buck Suttles had seen running was another deer. The one he’d shot had fallen dead in its tracks. Although he’d never seen the deer before that morning, Suttles recognized it instantly.

“I had no idea it was the unicorn buck I’d gotten photos of until I walked up to it.”

The buck had 10 points, counting the tall unicorn point of a third beam, jutting between its brow tines. Suttles phoned his friend Chad and his brother, Brandon, who both soon arrived to load the unusual buck into Suttles’ truck. They took the deer to his father’s home to have it processed.

“My dad, Barry Suttles Sr., used to be a butcher, and he skins and bones all our deer,” says Suttles. Barry Sr. was overcome while working on his son’s buck.

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“My dad, Ricky — Barry’s grandfather — arrowed a Pope and Young record book buck on that same piece of property,” says Barry Sr.

That deer had scored 153 1/8, and was taken in October 2011. Ricky passed away in July 2023, leaving his legacy of a hunting family.

“It filled me up, thinking about my dad and my son each taking a great buck from the same farm,” Barry Sr. says. “That’s what hunting is all about — family, tradition, and good times afield.”