By Ben Romans

We’ve looked at a quite a few big-game trophies from this season, but this one has to rank up there as one of the most impressive.

Sixteen-year-old bowhunter Austin Brimeyer killed a huge 17-point whitetail buck last week while hunting his family’s property in Iowa. It was a rainy afternoon, but that didn’t stop him from climbing into his treestand. After a few soft calls on his grunt tube, the buck walked out of the brush, and stood 15-yards away. Austin released an arrow, watched the deer crash away, then called his father to let him know they had a deer to track.

But it gets better. On closer inspection, Austin and his father noticed something wrapped around the buck’s rack. It turned out to be a string of Christmas lights the deer probably snatched while rubbing a tree on some poor neighbor’s decorated lawn. If it were me, I would probably keep the lights on the rack, then plug them in a night—just to make for an interesting story. Congratulations, Austin! —Ben