Rural McDowell resident Judy Meadows got her eight-point deer trophy without firing a shot.
Meadows went for a January ride on Rudy, her Missouri Foxtrotter. As she rode through a wooded hollow in the hills near her home, she spied a dead buck lying near a spring. The deer probably had been wounded by a hunter and come to the spring for water before it died. The carcass was in a state of deterioration and had been partially eaten by coyotes, but the head and antlers were intact.
In describing her adventure, Meadows said, “I hated to see that nice trophy go to waste.”
Meadows dismounted her horse, and with the reins over one arm, she tried to dislodge the head from the dead animal. This proved to be a daunting task, and she finally turned the head around and around many times until it came free. She feared that the horse would shy from the antlered head, but Rudy accepted its proximity calmly.
Her first attempt to remount her horse while holding her prize was thwarted when the saddle turned on the horse. After straightening the saddle and tightening the cinch, she was finally able to mount, after several attempts, and rode home to show the treasure to her husband, Mark.
Meadows, the librarian at Verona School, told student Devon Hall about her adventure, and he recommended that she display the deer as a European mount.
Following directions she found on the Internet, Meadows boiled the deer head in a solution of sal soda and water for three hours. She was then able to discard the lower jaw, clean the brains from the cranial cavity, and remove skin and other tissue from the skull.
The result is a clean, white skull with an eight-point rack attached, ready to mount on a wall plaque in the European fashion.
