"The Antler Man's" Horn House Is Truly One Of A Kind

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"The Antler Man's" Horn House Is Truly One Of A Kind

Have you ever had something you've liked to collect? There's all sorts of different collectibles out there that people have enjoyed keeping over the years.

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For some people it's baseball cards, for others it's antiques. Maybe you like buying old comic books? Personally, I really like old vinyl records. There's just something awesome about finding some cool old things that people don't want anymore.

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Collecting is a fun hobby, and one person who definitely agrees is Montana resident Jim Phillips. The only thing is, his collection is VERY different from mine, or probably anyone else's. You see, he collects discarded animal horns.

Trust me, it's quite the collection...

Since starting his collection as a 10-year-old boy, Jim has amassed a grand total of 16,000 antlers, all of which are on display in a shed that he owns.

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The crazy thing isn't even how well-maintained the horns are (he polishes them himself), but the fact that he neither hunts for them nor buys them from a store: he just wanders the backroads on long walks, finding discarded antlers from deer, elk, and moose.

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This can be a long and difficult process; Jim admits that he once walked 26 miles without finding a single antler. However, he seems to have pretty great luck most of the time, once bringing back 87 animals' worth of antlers.

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He's been doing this since 1958, and though he did sell about 2,100 antlers to put his daughters through college, he's gone on to comment "now I'm over sixteen thousand and I know seventeen or eighteen thousand will not be enough."

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That's quite the collection you have there Jim.