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MT file photo Chuck Todd poses with his record deer in 1992. Biggest big-game hunters on display By MARK FREEMAN The big blacktail deer that waltzed into Chuck Todd's cross-hairs made hunting history in 1992. Ed Burkhart took a similar piece of Oregon hunting lore with a similar, but even bigger, blacktail buck in 1991. And Steve Holte has seven years of cast-off antlers from a majestic, and mysterious, buck known throughout Oregon as "Pretty Boy." In each set of these record deer antlers, Todd, Burkhart and Holte all possess a piece of Oregon's trophy-hunting tradition chronicled in the state's only big-game hunting record book. But for five days in mid-February, the men and their mounts will be in one Portland display room for hunters and others to pay homage to the biggest of Oregon's best big-game animals. The deer antlers owned by Todd, Burkhart and Holte are three of 150 special mounts that will be on display Feb. 9-13 at "Oregon's Best of the Best," a featured attraction at the Portland Expo. The show includes the antler mounts of the top five record deer, elk and other big-game animals taken by rifle hunters in Oregon. It also includes the top three archery and black-powder entries in each of these categories, as well as the top 10 shed antlers ever found in Oregon for each of the species. They include Todd's 5-by-8 point deer, the world record for non-typical Columbian blacktail deer taken by a rifleman. It also contains Burkhart's buck, which is the state's all-time largest in the non-typical Cascade blacktail category. And the antlers of the blacktail buck "Pretty Boy," of whose annual sheds were found in Jackson County by Holte of Eagle Point, highlights the shed-antler category. The trophies all represent the top scorers in the various categories as chronicled in the Record Book for Oregon Big Game, the state's official hunting record book. Each trophy includes its own story of how it became a hunter's trophy. "That's the real interesting part of this for me," says Todd, whose own trophy-hunting story is unique. "The stories are what makes the racks. Every rack has a story behind it." And during a Feb. 11 award presentation, every rack owner will receive a medallion tapping it as one of Oregon's all-time animals. The presentation will be by Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Jim Greer, who is a recipient himself. While an up-and-coming ODFW biologist in 1976, Greer shot a pronghorn antelope with horns that still rank as fifth best of pronghorns killed by hunters in Oregon. And it, too, has a story behind it. "It was the last antelope I saw on the last hour of the last day of the season," Greer says. "But I'm not going to tell you where, because I might want to go back there and hunt sometime again." Greer sees the exhibit as less about trophy hunters and record books. "It's a good opportunity to see what kinds of special animals that come out of this state," Greer says. That's the idea David Morris had when he first began putting together the "Best of the Best" show last year. "I always thought it would be something any hunter in the state would want to do -- walk in one facility and see all these animals," says Morris, a former concrete worker who publishes the record books for Oregon, Washington and Idaho. He started contacting the record owners across Oregon and arranged to borrow the heads for the show and insure them for the trip. They include entries from 42 hunters in Jackson and Josephine counties -- by far the largest single area represented in the show. The local entries are dominated by mounts of blacktail deer, whose antlers grow large and wide here because of a combination of genetics and high-mineral forage. Many of the deer fell to men like Todd, a Jackson County sheriff's deputy who stumbled upon his record blacktail in the Applegate Unit on the last afternoon of the 1992 hunting season. Todd's son Mike first spotted the massive buck and chased it for 45 minutes without getting a chance to shoot. The elder Todd, walking a short distance away, was oblivious to his son's running encounter. Then the buck, still being stalked by Mike Todd, walked and paused in plain sight of Chuck Todd about 60 yards away. Two shots later, Todd was a record-holder with a deer whose 5-by-8 point antlers scored 202ths points on the Boone and Crockett Club scale. "It's a different story," Todd says seven years after the hunt. "I'd like to have had something where I'd stalked him for weeks, or belly-crawled across a field to get a decent shot at him." That scenario more resembles the 1991 hunt of Burkhart, who scoured the Elk Creek area for one of a handful of big bucks he had seen the previous hunting season. He then spied one of the bigger bucks bedded down on rocks 100 yards away, then ended Oregon hunting history just one shot later. The antlers of Burkhart's Cascade blacktail had an astounding 14 points on its right side and 15 points on its left. It scored 235ths points. Holte's story of Pretty Boy lasts longer. Holte, who hunts for the shed antlers of deer and elk each late winter and early spring, found the shed antlers from one deer for seven straight years. By placing them side-by-side, the antlers reveal a story of how the deer grew and matured, then began to weaken and shrink. After not finding the antlers for three years, Holte believes Pretty Boy died without Holte ever seeing him. Still, the Pretty Boy story is remarkable, and Holte believes it is equally remarkable that the shed-hunters' trophies are garnering respect right alongside the trophies from rifle, bow and muzzleloader hunters at the Portland show. "It's a unique thing for shed hunters," Holte says. "Most don't recognize us." (Staff writer Mark Freeman covers the outdoors for the Mail Tribune. Call him at 776-4470, or e-mail him at [email protected] ) Outdoor Journal Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Mail Tribune � 2000 -- Medford, Oregon USA