Photo by Ralph Hensley.

The year was 1968. The county had established "road gangs" of high school students who needed summer jobs, and a few of my buddies and myself were among those. Typically, we were taken to some remote part of Johnson County and let out with brush hooks, swing blades and assorted other brush-cutting apparatus. We would walk the roads, most of which were dirt back in those days, and clear out any blind corners or spots where vegetation hindered the view of motorists.

One particular day we were working between Catalpa and Oark, two small communities in the northern part of the county. It's still a remote area today, so you can imagine what it was like 40 years ago.

At one point, we passed an old barn, and there was a deer skull nailed to one end of it. As we worked along, every one of us, mostly "country" kids that grew up around stock and wildlife, were amazed at the size of that old rack, bleached white by the sun. Naturally, we tried to get a closer look, but it was nailed up high enough that we couldn't reach it, so all we could do was stand there and stare.

I was a pretty stout lad in those days, and still my shoulders would easily have fit inside that old rack. It had 10 points, and even though time has likely allowed them to "grow" some, I would still say that the G-2s were 12 to 14 inches long, and the G-3s not much shorter. But it was the incredible main beams that riveted our attention; both of them long and massive, and even after all this time I would say that each was close to 30 inches, and that may be conservative!

Many years later, when the whitetail craze first started flowering, I went back and tried to find that old head. But the barn had fallen down, its remains covered by blackberry and honeysuckle, and the skull was gone. I asked several people from the area and they said that the family that lived there had just "moved on" sometime during the '70s or early '80s, and while most of them remembered seeing the head, no one that I talked to knew the story behind it.

I certainly can't prove it, but today I'm about as certain as I was back then that the old head on the side of that barn was the biggest I've ever seen in Arkansas!

Last year, there were six Arkansas bucks taken that scored high enough to be eligible for entry into the all-time record book of the Boone and Crockett Club, the nation's oldest records-keeping organization for big game.

Six "Booners" in one year is considerably above the state's annual average for book deer, which has stood at around four per year since about 1990 or so. The reason for the increase? The most obvious is moderate weather, particularly during the late-summer period. Why is that most important? Because in Mother Nature's scheme of things, the nutrition taken in through feeding goes first to build bone and body tissue, and only after that requirement is satisfied does the headgear somewhat receive preference. Since the body attains maximum growth by about mid-August, in years when dry weather cuts back on the quantity and quality of the food source, after that time antler size will suffer. That was not the case in 2006.

Today, the Natural State has 86 deer listed in the B&C all-time record book (not counting those bucks taken last fall), and that ranks us No. 17 nationwide. However, I will also point out that there are 34 more bucks, all of which have been scored at one time or another by official B&C personnel, that have not been entered, for a variety of reasons, at this time. If those deer were added, it would make the state's total 120, and would raise Arkansas to No. 14 nationwide.

When you consider only the Southeastern region, it's a different story. From a geographic or historical perspective, I've never really figured out if Kentucky is a Southeastern state, but since the Wildcats play in the SEC, I suppose we should give them the benefit of the doubt. So today, Arkansas ranks No. 2 in the region, behind only the blueblood state, in terms of B&C bucks produced.