It’s one thing to get a nine-point buck with, say, five points on one side and four points on the other. But a nine-point with four points on one side, four on the other and one in the middle• That’s something else indeed. Yet that’s just the kind of deer Alex Laughlin of Pitcairn killed in Derry Township on the first Saturday of the firearms deer season. He bagged a seemingly normal-looking eight point that — as he later discovered — had a one-and-a-half-inch-long piece of antler from another buck stuck in its head. Laughlin’s tale begins routinely enough. He was in a tree stand at about 7:45 a.m. when a group of does wandered by, stopping to feed directly under him. Soon, a second group of does joined the first. Laughlin had spent a few minutes watching those when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw another deer moving, this one coming on the run, having apparently been spooked by another hunter. Laughlin saw antlers, counted points, shot — and missed. That’s when the chaos began. “Whenever I shot, I had 18 deer going everywhere,” Laughlin said, referring to the does startled by the blast from his rifle. “That buck didn’t know what to do. He came to a complete stop. “Those doe actually helped me to get that buck,” Laughlin continued. “If they hadn’t been there, he would have kept on busting through and I wouldn’t have gotten another shot.” Laughlin did, though, have time to aim and shoot again. That time he killed his deer. It was a fine buck, the biggest Laughlin’s ever bagged, with a 15-inch inside spread and long tines. You can be sure he spent a lot of time looking at the deer’s antlers and head, as did several friends. None noticed anything out of the ordinary. “I got it drug in and there were six guys there. Nobody had a clue,” Laughlin said. It was only when Frank Capozzi, owner of Bucko’s Taxidermy in Penn Township, started removing the hide from the skull that he noticed the extra bit of antler. The antler piece hadn’t pierced the deer’s skull, but had settled in on top of the head, trapped between bone and skin. Though there was a calcium deposit of sorts under the hide, there was no scab. The deer’s hair had grown over the old wound, too, leaving no visible signs that the antler was there. It’s certainly a one-of-a-kind case in Capozzi’s book. “That was the first time I ever found a point in one,” said Capozzi, who estimated he’s mounted 300 or so deer over the last 15 years and cut up hundreds more working with his dad, a butcher. “I’ve found arrows in deer before, but never a point. I’ve never seen anything like it.” “What are the odds of something like happening?” agreed Joe Spinogatti of North Huntingdon, a fellow hunter and Laughlin’s employer. “I’ve never even heard of anything like that.” Obviously, the buck he killed and another had to be sparring when the tip of one’s antler snapped off, Laughlin said. What’s amazing is that his deer not only wasn’t killed, it didn’t seem to be suffering at all from having been pierced by an antler. Considering how much power and torque it must have taken to snap off an antler like that, the deer is lucky the tip didn’t go through it’s skull into it’s brain, Laughlin said. “It probably would have killed it,” Laughlin said. “Either way, he must have had one heck of a headache.” Laughlin won’t be shy about returning to hunt his secret spot next year. He figures that, if it’s true that similar-sized bucks typically fight one another, there’s a chance that there’s a twin to his buck still running around out there somewhere. He hopes to find him next year. In the meantime, he’s quite happy with the deer he got, bonus antler point and all. “I asked Joe, can I count him as a nine-point?” Laughlin said.

---

Copyright ©2026— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)

---