by Scott Bestul

Well folks, if you’ve been following Dave Hurteau’s latest buck-scoring contest , you’ll know it was hotly contested. That contest tested your scoring ability on bucks shot last fall by Mathew pro-staffers and offered the reward of a Mathews 2011 flagship bow, the Z7 Extreme. Amazingly, after four tough-to-judge bucks, we had a three-way tie between AlpoHunts11, 1RutNBuc, and Jrm0023, three men whose eyes were so keen they were off by a mere 2/8” on four great whitetails!

The tie-breaker buck was this beautiful whitetail, shot by Mathews pro-staffer Mike Davis last fall.

Dave asked that all tie-breaker scores be submitted by last Thursday (August 25) and, in a bit of a shocker, only one contestant—AlpoHunts11—made the deadline. So now it’s final: AlpoHunts11 is the winner of a new Mathews Z7 Extreme! Congrats to you Alpo, and we’ll be contacting you for information so we can get you your new bow!

I know all of you are dying of curiosity on two issues; 1) What happened to the other guys, and 2) What did the buck actually score? Well I have no clue about the first question, but to answer number two, Davis’ tall-tined monster gross-scored 174-1/8” B&C. AlpoHunts11 submitted a guess of 154-7/8”, which was nearly 20” off… Proving that sometimes just showing up to play is the most important thing! Congrats to AlpoHunts11, and Dave and I thank all of you for participating!