The 2010 deer season was a remarkable one for hunters throughout the country. This is Field & Stream's countdown of the 50 best bucks of the year ranked by a combination of the deer's size, the uniqueness of the bucks and the amazing stories that go along with them.

#50
Pinwheel Dropper

An Army National Guard combat engineer and Iraq War vet arrowed this quadruple drop tine inside the city limits of Columbus, Ohio, on October 25. Travis Vollmar missed the 2008 season fighting in Iraq and will miss the 2011 season after shipping out to Afghanistan this summer. He says this deer, which he shot with a crossbow at 15 yards, just may just be enough buck for all three seasons. The rack grossed 192 on the Buckmaster system and netted a 184 green score, but numbers don’t even begin to capture its unusual character, especially that pinwheel left antler.

Vollmar studied the deer across two seasons’ worth of trail cam photographs before intercepting him feeding in some apple trees in the overgrown yard of an abandoned house. Despite all the trail cam photos, Vollmar still found the buck better than expected when he finally had the rack in his hands. Says Vollmar, “There was definitely no ground shrinkage.”