GORHAM – It’s a rare awards banquet where most of the recipients are first timers. Or where those who travel from other states to be recognized come more to see what others have done.

Welcome to the Maine Antler and Skull Trophy Club annual ceremony, where rookies and records are the usual mix and where the season’s results appear in 3-D on the walls.

At this year’s banquet, held last weekend at the University of Southern Maine, more than half of the 500 or so in attendance had never been there before, not in the club’s 24 years of existence.

“There will be five to six guys there who are serious deer hunters. They’ve found the right combination,” said MASTC member Tobey Montgomery. “For most, it’s the luck of the draw.”

Not that the serious hunters who attend don’t want each year to take a buck that will score in their state antler club or, better still, with the famed North American club, Boone and Crockett, which has publicly recognized outstanding big-game trophies since 1932. It’s just that most don’t.

“Most of them have not taken trophy animals, but they see the caliber hanging there and they dream to do it,” said MASTC founder and president Dick Arsenault. “They might take a large buck. But it may not have the head gear.”

The best example of how unintentional a winner can be is Cindy Higgins of Milford who made it into the club for the first time after bagging a moose with the largest rack in Maine history.

Higgins’ massive, 31-point, 80-pound rack also scored high enough with Boone and Crockett with a total 220 6/8 points to put her 15th on the club’s all-time list for the Canadian moose category, which includes those shot in Maine.

Typical of a big-time rookie, Higgins said she was simply in the right place at the right time. Yet Higgins is no novice to hunting and the 22-year veteran is now quick to point to her credentials.

When asked where she would be at the banquet amid the crowd of some 500, Higgins didn’t falter.

“Just look for the one with the biggest [antlers]. I’m awful,” she said. “But I’m proud.”

The banquet showcased many of the moose racks, the 34 deer antlers, and the scattered bear skulls that put last fall’s hunters in the record books. It was a rare sight, but about what you’d expect in a hall celebrating hunting – something like a taxidermist shop where nobody comes to collect.

However, Higgins’ moose is beyond expectation, especially considering the tale of how she got it.

Higgins set out with her hunting party in Portage with promises of topping the rack her daughter, Jamie, took out of the 1997 moose hunt, and the one her husband, Mike, got in 1999. So when her husband encouraged her to shoot a small moose on opening day, Higgins told him she’d wait for something bigger.

Two days later, she came upon the moose she took on a dead-end road. She had no idea it was a trophy animal.

“When I shot it, I knew it was a good-size moose, but little did we know,” Higgins said of the 850 pound animal. “When we drove into Portage, everybody was running over to the truck.”

The moose rack scored 220 6/8 points with MASTC to top the old Maine state record of 217, set by Clifford Damon of Livermore in 1997. But, in truth, it was not much bigger than that of 12-year-old Mike Shaw, which sat to the left of it at the banquet. The difference is Higgins’ rack is closer to being perfectly symmetrical.

MASTC’s system of scoring is based on the one used by Boone and Crockett, but is often more forgiving, while still being strict enough to deny most racks.

“The system is looking for the most evenly distributed bone mass on both sides. A mirror image,” said Arsenault, 61, of Buxton.

Each side is matched against the other for symmetry, with points being given for the size of the smaller of two antler tips. In the Boone and Crockett system, more points are deducted for imperfections.

“Those who score in Boone and Crockett are a very, very small percentage,” said Ron Boucher of Vermont, who scores for the North American club and scored the current world record buck rack. “In Maine, maybe there will be two to three a year.”

When you consider there were 21,422 bucks taken last fall, the percentage of hunters who bag those with perfect racks is incredibly small.

Even those who make it into the various Big Buck clubs year after year may never meet the criteria required by MASTC. There have been 275-pound bucks that didn’t make the club.

Yet if one were after a trophy buck, Maine is a place they would consider hunting.

“Maine has world record big bucks. I came to see some of what Maine has produced,” said John Sisters from Danby, Vt., who has hunted near Ashland for 11 years but never was invited to the MASTC banquet before this year. “This deer weighed 232 pounds. I’ve gotten heavier here, but they’ve never scored.”

Sisters, himself, was a rare breed at the banquet. According to Arsenault, few MASTC winners are competitive hunters seeking big buck glory.

“There is no rhyme or reason. Some year we have 10- to 12-year-old kids. One year we had a 93-year-old man. This year there is a guy in [Hancock] who is in a wheelchair,” Anderson said of Herb Lounder, who shot a 12-point, 210-pound buck that scored 150 3/7.

Young Mike Shaw was another good example of a hunter turned unexpected celebrity.

The 12-year-old from Standish shot a moose that scored 173 5/8 after his father, Mike Sr., failed to kill the animal. It was the youngster’s first hunt, and it was the first animal he ever brought down.

“We didn’t know until a few weeks ago I made it into MASTC. My dad’s friend told us to have it scored,” said the Bonny Eagle middle school student. “Kids at school didn’t believe I shot the moose. My Dad had to bring in a picture to show them. Nobody will believe I made this club.”

While tagging a trophy deer can be an elusive quest, bagging a prize moose the likes of Higgins’ is a near impossible venture to undertake.

First of all, you need luck just to get into the Maine hunt in which 3,000 permits were given out to more than 80,000 applicants in the past two years.

Then, consider how long some records can stand.

Sure, Higgins’ rack that measures 5-feet-1/2 from tip-to-tip bettered a state-record rack that was just 4 years old. But before the previous record of Damon’s was set in 1997 there had not been a more perfect moose rack taken since 1900 when Colonel H.M. Boyce bagged a moose whose rack scored 216 1/8 with Boone and Crockett. That trophy is now gathering dust in the Everhart Museum in Scranton, Pa., a natural history museum started in 1908.

Yet, while other hunters dream of such success, Higgins enjoyment of it only goes so far.

Every three years, Boone and Crockett invites to its banquet the top five finishers that placed in each category during that time period. Higgins has been invited to the club’s banquet in Springfield, Mo., in June. But She doesn’t know if she’ll go.

“We haven’t talked a whole lot about it,” she said. “They don’t pay us to take it there, it’s up to us. It’s awkward. It’s tough.”

Deirdre Fleming covers outdoor sports and recreation for the NEWS. She can be reached at 990-8250 or at dfleming@bangordailynews.net.