Years ago, a couple friends both shot Bulls in the waning hours of daylight. We hurriedly field dressed the Bulls, rolled them up on some logs to circulate air under the carcasses, and one of my friends decided to carry out a head that evening. It was dark thirty, and I'm embarrassed to say all we had for a light was my mini mag flashlight. As we made our way through the timber in complete darkness, I was going up an incline and stopped to get my bearings. My buddy carrying the elk head stopped behind me, but tried to take a step back to keep his balance. His foot hit something on the ground, and he fell over backwards on to his back.
I shined the light on him, and the 3rd tine of the Elk beam punctured his flannel shirt in the back, poked through and also punctured the front of his shirt. That took some doing, as flannel fabric is fairly tough. But then antler's are pretty pointed too. If that antler would have been over just a couple inches, it likely would have punctured either a lung or his kidneys. Under the circumstances of being a long way from being out of there, I expect it would have been fatal. Crap occurs!
