JASPER - Most onlookers have a one-word reaction to Kylan McCutcheon’s whitetail buck - “wow!”

McCutcheon killed a 25-point buck in Newton County in November, and those 25 points are massive. Preliminary score on the Boone and Crockett scale is 205, and that’s a bunch though not an Arkansas record.

McCutcheon, 16, lives in the Parthenon community southwest of Jasper. This is rugged mountain country, and hunting is definitely a way of life for residents. McCutcheon said, “I’ve been hunting all my life, and I killed my first deer when I was 9 years old. I’ve killed 11 so far, 8 bucks and 3 does.”

As is often the case with trophies in hunting, McCutcheon’s deer came about through a somewhat unusual route. He was hunting alone, and he killed it in mid- to late morning. And he wasn’t all that far form home either.

 “I was by myself that day,” McCutcheon said. “I was hunting from a ground blind and hadn’t seen anything. It was five or six miles from my house. Then I heard a deer behind me, and it was a doe. Then I heard a buck grunt behind her.

“The buck came out where I could see it, but it smelled me and turned and ran. I shot it when it was about 150 yards away. It went down, and I waited 10 minutes. Then I started trailing it. He laid down and got up and ran. He left a blood trail. I trailed it about a half mile, then I had to go to work. I called my dad, and he came out to trail the deer.”

Stanley McCutcheon found the trail and spotted the deer. Then darkness set it. The next morning at daylight, Kylan McCutcheon was back on the scene, found the trail and found the big deer.

He said, “When I first saw the deer, I thought it was a big 8-point or 10-point buck. I didn’t realize what a big rack it had. It really was kind of small in the body, especially to have a rack that big. They told me the deer was 4 and a half years old.”

McCutcheon took the buck to Jamie Mefford of Ozark Outfitters in Jasper, who did the antler measurements with Boone and Crockett guidelines.

Craig Uyeda of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, a certified Boone and Crockett scorer, said the required measurements are tip-to-tip spread, greatest spread, inside spread, total length of all abnormal points, length of main beam, length of each point, circumferences of main beam at (1) base, (2) between first and second point (3) between second and third point and (4) between third and fourth point, if present. If the matching points are different in length and circumference, the difference is subtracted from the total.