Monster Buck Antlers Stolen from Teen Deer Hunter Recovered After 14 Years
Buck fever darkens the heart of man.
When 14-year-old Dave Richmond eyed a 14-point buck of a lifetime, he pulled the trigger on a 14-year chain of theft and lies, bookended by the outrageously unlikely recovery of a magnificent set of antlers.
After Richmond’s deer of dreams was stolen within days of the kill, he carried an obsessive vigil into adulthood—hoping and believing for the return of a spectacular rack. Following 14 years of cold-nosing deadend trails, Richmond was stunned to receive a message from an anonymous young hunter—age 14: “I know where your deer is.”
Dumbfounded, Richmond was unable to accept the claim. “Impossible. Just no way. I figured it had to be someone pranking me.”
Two days later, he received a second message from the teen, along with an unmistakable photo.
“The picture told it all,” Richmond says. “I was looking at my deer.”
Welcome to a tale of deceit trumped by the enduring faith of a 14-year-old.
The Monster
Mercury falling, several weeks prior to the opening day of the 1998-gun season in Baltimore County, Maryland, on a November morning with enough chill to keep deer moving, young Dave Richmond walked behind his house to scout.
Richmond’s father, Dave, Sr., owned a modest 2 acres that served as a corridor to a neighbor’s further 10 acres, and the conjoined block rubbed against several hundred wooded acres of county land. Flat as an anvil, the area received minimal pressure and was ideal hunting ground for a 14-year-old hopeful.
Although destined for a life in land management as CEO and founder of Whitetail Obsession Outdoors, focused on soil health, cover crops, and wildlife proliferation, Richmond was green in 1998, without a buck-notch on his belt.
As he headed toward the woods, hoping to catch sight of a deer, or at least find a scrape or rub, Richmond froze in his tracks while his adrenaline went into hyperdrive. One hundred yards distant, beneath a persimmon tree, a buck was feasting on a bounty of bitter, orange-tinted fruit.
Although a buck was a buck to teenage Richmond, the creature before him was extra. Simply, this buck wore a Christmas tree atop its head.
“In that moment, I did not know it was a 14-point or a special deer,” Richmond recalls. “All I knew was that it was big.”
Big? How about roughly 240 lb. and 14 points across a 185 non-typical Boone and Crockett score?
Big, indeed. Big enough to draw the eye of a thief.
Telltale Fingerprints
With gun season waiting in the wings (the Saturday after Thanksgiving Day), Richmond and Dave, Sr., secured a ladder stand to the persimmon tree—and began a nervy wait, hoping the buck wouldn’t be claimed by a bow hunter.
Opening day and light rain, the father-and-son pair climbed the ladder stand and settled in for an afternoon hunt. Within 30 minutes, the 14-point made an appearance, crossing dead-ahead of the stand, roughly 40 yards from Richmond. Dry-mouthed and pulse exploding, Richmond raised a Remington 870 Junior 20 gauge, and slammed a slug into the deer, hitting just behind the shoulder and penetrating both lungs—hemorrhagic shock.
The buck ran onto the neighbor’s 10 acres and collapsed. Approximately 30 minutes later, Richmond and Dave, Sr., crawled out of the stand, tracked the blood trail, and found a trophy.
“Even when I walked up on the buck on the ground, I still didn’t have a clue how special he was,” Richmond says, “but when I saw dad’s reaction, that was the moment I knew it was way, way different.”
“My Lord, he’s huge,” Dave, Sr., gasped, in total surprise.
Pulling out an old-school film camera and 35-milimeter lens, Dave, Sr., snapped photos of his son alongside the buck. In a sense, Dave, Sr., inadvertently preserved the deer’s fingerprints—no two racks exactly alike.
A successful father-and-son opening day effort. A trophy deer. A boy’s first buck. A trip to an eastern Maryland taxidermist for a shoulder mount. “That’s the way my hunting story should have ended,” Richmond says. “Turns out it was only just beginning.”
30 Miles
One week before Christmas, the Richmond family phone rang with a call from the taxidermist. A break-in and burglar—stolen antlers. “It was pretty much cut and dried,” Richmond recalls. “The taxidermist said he always, always locked up all antlers, but on this one night, he didn’t do it, and then somebody broke in and took my deer.”
Dave, Sr., instantly filed a police report, but a stolen rack during Christmas season ranked low on the law enforcement ladder of priority. The Richmond family went into overdrive, trying to raise community awareness to gain a lead or tip—even the tiniest clue. Dave, Sr., alerted the public via The Outdoorsman Radio Show, but the trail was stone cold. No hints and no horns.
Richmond was trapped in an unsettling, dead calm. He and his family believed the taxidermy theft was a ruse. “Something was off with the story. We couldn’t prove a thing, but everyone knew there was a huge market for big antlers—there could be thousands of dollars in play for the right person. Someone sneaks into a business on the single occasion the antlers aren’t locked up? What were the odds?”
“I was heartbroken and gutted,” Richmond says. “All these lifelong hunters would see the picture and say, ‘That is world class. We’ve never seen a such a deer,’ and I’d feel even worse.”
Maddeningly, Richmond believed the rack was hanging on a thief’s wall. Days turned to weeks to months to years—no antlers. As an adult, Richmond achieved hunting success he’d never foreseen with Whitetail Obsession Outdoors, but the 14-year-old trapped in 1998 refused to spit the bit on a frozen memory.
“I never let it go,” he says. “Probably every day I thought about my stolen deer, because every day I was doing something deer-related in life. That was my world and it all pointed back to the deer of my teens.”
“It would come up in conversations with my family, especially when hunting season rolled around. My mom, Gail, would get a pained, sad look on her face. In my mind, I was convinced the rack was far away on a wall in Texas or California.”
Not quite. Try 30 miles.
Set the Fuse
At 28 years old, with 14 years in the rearview mirror since the theft, Richmond delivered a deer in late 2012 to his new taxidermist—a local Baltimore County outfit—and sat down to chew the fat with the owner and several hunters.
Back in 1998, following Richmond’s harvest of the massive buck, word spread like wildfire in Baltimore County about the teen’s haul. Predictably, the hunters poured into the relatively small parcel of woods searching for the same genetics. “The poachers and trespassers all showed up,” Richmond describes.
Turning back time on several other deer subsequently killed in the area, the subject of Richmond’s stolen buck was pulled from the closet. “One of the guys asked me, ‘Dave, did you ever hear anything more about your big deer? You should post something online and see what happens.’”
Richmond heeded the advice and built a user-profile on a well-known wildlife forum. He posted a picture of the missing buck, and pecked out a simple plea: “Does anyone know anything about this deer I killed as a boy? It was stolen in 1998.”
Boom. Within hours, approximately 50 comments poured in and piqued Richmond’s hopes. Nada. Each comment contained heartfelt commiseration or condemnation of the thief—but no leads.
Fifty misses, but he only needed one hit to set the fuse.
Forty-eight hours later, Richmond received a direct message with a blunt declaration: “I know where your deer is. I’ve seen it. It’s inside a gun shop by my house. I go in all the time and it’s in there.”
The message was sent by a 14-year-old local—and Richmond was not about to put stock in a teen’s unlikely claim. “Whatever. I thought he was trolling or mistaken. I messaged him back and said, ‘Next time you go into the shop, take a picture and post it on this site.”
Two days later, Richmond’s inbox jingled.
“Let’s Go Get It”
Richmond opened a photo attachment and stared down the barrel of proof. Flash to a bang on his computer screen, he saw the antler configuration—fingerprints—and knew the 14-year-old keyboard sleuth was telling the truth.
Richmond’s deer was a mere 30 miles distant, hanging on a gun shop wall. Next step: law enforcement.
“I called the police and tried to explain 14 years, but I kept getting redirected,” Richmond recounts. “Finally, I got an officer that was a hunter and he immediately understood the significance of what I was saying. He told me, ‘I’ll meet you at the gun shop.’”
Clockwork, the police officer was already waiting in the lot when Richmond pulled up to the gun shop. Richmond provided more detail and handed over several more physical pictures.
Satisfied with the initial veracity of Richmond’s contention, the officer went inside the gun shop to confirm the presence of the shoulder mount. “He told me to wait outside while he checked it out,” Richmond says. “A couple minutes later, he comes out and says, ‘Your deer is on the wall inside. Let’s go get it.’ Talk about making your blood rush.”
In lock step behind the policeman, Richmond walked in the store, hung a right toward a display of guns, and came face-to-muzzle with his deer for the first time in 14 years.
The officer asked the gun shop owner a simple question: “Where did you get this deer?”
The proprietor offered a winding explanation.
“The gun store owner said he had some rental houses and one of his tenants moved out and left this deer on the wall,” Richmond notes. “You kidding? Who leaves a deer behind? I believed, and I think the officer believed, the story was a lie. Honestly, I wanted to put my hands on this guy. What is the truth? How did my deer get here? There is one certainty: It wasn’t left on a tenant’s wall.”
The policeman spoke in the imperative, according to Richmond: “This is obviously Richmond’s deer. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
The shop owner immediately surrendered the mount. Within seconds, Richmond left the gun shop with his deer—beaming with the wonder of a teen killing his first buck. In that moment, Dave Richmond was again 14.
“He Bailed”
Exiting the gun shop lot, Richmond turned the wheel away from home and toward the original taxidermist of 1998. Richmond had unfinished business. “I wanted to spook him. I wanted to deliver a message: I know.”
Mount in tow, Richmond entered the building and held the deer up to the lens of a central surveillance camera. “I spoke to the desk clerk and asked for the taxidermist. She said he was working downstairs and would be right up. Fifteen minutes went by and he was a no-show, but I knew he was watching me on the camera. I asked the clerk one more time, and this time, she gave it away: ‘He says he’s not coming up.’”
“He bailed,” Richmond emphasizes, “and he knows why.”
Buck Fever
After Boone and Crockett certified the buck (185 non-typical), Richmond entered it in Maryland’s Trophy Deer Contest and won first place. He was told the buck would have to remain at the contest site for three days. “Oh, hellllll no,” Richmond says, “but I gave in when they promised me it would be safe. I called and texted them 50 times to be certain.”
Once the story (including a TikTok video) of the 14-point’s loss and recovery circulated, Richmond was inundated with stories from victims of a variety of wildlife-related thefts. “Buck fever makes people go nuts and they will do anything to get a big deer. They’ll steal and claim a deer as their own, or they’ll steal and sell the antlers. This kind of theft is much more common than I ever knew. Now, people never stop telling me stories that echo my own.”
And what of Richmond’s 14-year-old online helper? “I called his dad and asked if there was any token of thanks that his son might enjoy. The dad told me a $50 Cabela’s gift card would be awesome. I went right out and bought him a $300 Cabela’s gift card. It was worth every penny to me and much, much more. So fitting on how it all came together: I was 14; I killed a 14-pt; 14 years went by; and a 14-year-old found my deer. I could not be more grateful.”
The monster buck now rests on Richmond’s living room wall. “He was 30 miles away the whole time, but I never quit looking to bring him home,” Richmond adds. “The 14-year-old kid in me never gave up.”
To read more stories from Chris Bennett (cbennett@farmjournal.com 662-592-1106) see:
Young Farmer uses YouTube and Video Games to Buy $1.8M Land
Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market
Tractorcade: How an Epic Convoy and Legendary Farmer Army Shook Washington, D.C.
Bagging the Tomato King: The Insane Hunt for Agriculture’s Wildest Con Man
While America Slept, China Stole the Farm
Bizarre Mystery of Mummified Coon Dog Solved After 40 Years
The Arrowhead whisperer: Stunning Indian Artifact Collection Found on Farmland
Where's the Beef: Con Artist Turns Texas Cattle Industry Into $100M Playground
Fleecing the Farm: How a Fake Crop Fueled a Bizarre $25 Million Ag Scam
Skeleton In the Walls: Mysterious Arkansas Farmhouse Hides Civil War History
US Farming Loses the King of Combines
Ghost in the House: A Forgotten American Farming Tragedy
Rat Hunting with the Dogs of War, Farming's Greatest Show on Legs
Evil Grain: The Wild Tale of History’s Biggest Crop Insurance Scam
