The Rodney Dangerfield Buck
“Just Can’t Get No Respect” The Ralph Postin Buck
Published in the September 2006 issue of
RACK Magazine
by
Ed Waite

The muzzleloader season was in full swing in Fulton Co. Illinois. Ralph Postin, like so
many others was taking to the fields and forests, hoping to harvest a deer to help fill the
freezer. Ralph was carrying a Thompson Center .54 caliber inline front loader. It was a
brand new gun that he had purchased for a trip to Colorado in a few weeks to elk hunt,
(but that’s another story.) This day was just like many others in the deer woods, it was
very overcast and the wind was howling through the trees. Far to windy to be in a tree
stand, Ralph decided that he would hunt some of the wooded land on the 1500 acres that
he and his four brothers farm. Being the only one of the five to hunt, he pretty much had
the entire place to himself. The brothers grew corn and soybeans in the many fields along
the bottom which provided high protein for the deer and helped keep them in the area,
and there were also large pastures where they kept a herd of beef cattle.

Instead of walking in from his place, Ralph drove to his brothers house and would walk
in from there to a spot where he wanted to try sitting. He arrived at his “spot” and was
getting settled in when he heard a noise behind him and turned to find that his brothers
dog had followed him into the woods. After numerous attempts to shoo the dog away, it
finally headed for the house but with all the noise he and the dog had made, Ralph
decided he may as well move on into the bottom. Anyway, it was just too windy to sit
and so he decided to walk along a hardwood bottom with a wide creek that passed
through the farm. There were plenty of red and white oaks and a few scattered hickories
and honey locusts, not to mention lots of multiflora rose, a favorite of whitetail deer,
along the 15-20 foot wide creek. At 40 degrees it wasn’t uncomfortable to be walking but
the wind in the face tended to make the eyes water. Still it was better than not hunting. “I had already filled my shotgun tag with a very nice nine point buck during the early
shotgun season so I was hoping for a chance at another nice buck or maybe a big fat doe.
Since it was too windy to hunt from one of my stands, I started still hunting in the middle
of the afternoon,” Ralph recalled.

Ralph was hunting a long strip of hardwoods that was up to three hundred yards wide
in some places and 15 to 20 yards in others, that continued far beyond the boundary of
their own property. “This has always been very productive territory in the past and has
yielded numerous bucks and does. Deer regularly travel along both sides of the stream
that runs through the bottom,” quotes Ralph. It was in fact a natural freeway for deer
travel up and down the valley. Plenty of cover down low and loads of browse and forage,
plus when the season was right, lots of mast for munching. Walking this day was pretty
good as the wind helped cover the leaf noise and the occasional broken twig underfoot.

“I had covered about 250-300 yards during the first hour and had seen nothing, then all
of a sudden up ahead, I saw several does with a buck chasing them as they circled through a multiflora rose thicket. When the does saw me they split up and ran in all different directions. The buck never saw me, but one doe went up alongside the creek and I saw that the buck had followed her and soon they both went into a gully along the edge of an old strip mine. I decided to follow him and see where he went,” Ralph said. He carefully made his way up along the gully and up to the top where he could see out into one of their pastures.

 

 
“There he was, standing out in the pasture about 90 to100 yards away. I could see a
pretty tall rack but it didn’t look like it had very many points. I was hunting with open
sights, so I got up near a small tree and used it as a rest. When I was steady, I took the
shot. As the smoke cleared I saw him running away as though he was unhit. It seemed
like I should have hit him, so I waited a good while along the side of the tree,” Ralph
continued. “After about a half hour I walked out into the pasture to see if I had made a
good hit. I looked around quite awhile before I found a couple spots of blood. There
wasn’t much of a trail, but I had seen the direction he had run so I walked in that way.
When I had walked maybe a hundred yards to the top of the rise and looked over the top, I saw him laying there dead.”
“I walked down to where he was laying and I was actually quite shocked at the size of his rack. I tried several times to count the points and kept getting lost at 16 or 17 points. When I took him to the check station I counted again and got up to 20 points, then later when I took him to Cooper Johnson, my taxidermist, we counted up to 22 points.” Ralph recalled. “A couple of days later Cooper Johnson called and said there were at least 24 points and maybe even 26.”
Ralph calls it, “The Rodney Dangerfield Buck, cause it can’t get no respect.” The deer was in very good shape for post rut, he had probably lost a good bit of weight, but still field dressed at 170 pounds. His rack was in perfect condition, not a single one of the 24 points was severely chipped or broken. The date of the harvest was November 30, 1995.

This impressive rack is a typical 7x7, with 5 irregular points on each side for a total of
24 scoreable points, and a grand total BTR score of 201 3/8 inches. How could a buck
with a score this big, get “No Respect”? Well, for one thing, it only has a 14 6/8” inside
spread. It just doesn’t “look” big. But let me tell you, add that 14 6/8 inches to the total
score and it comes to 216 1/8 inches composite, and that ain’t no small buck! More?
There is only 5/8 of an inch of difference between the left and right sides and if that
doesn’t tell the whole story, how about all eight circumference measurements are over 5
inches for a total of 43 inches of circumference!!! Want more? Take away the 8 3/8 and
8 2/8 inches of non-typical points on the left and right sides and the rack will still break
190 inches. Even with all the extra irregular points, it only has 8.2 % of irregular inches
so it falls into the semi-irregular category

This is a very respectable buck! View Score Sheet