I've seen this before up in D7. A foreigner shot a small, barely legal buck. Gutted it and tagged it. While driving back to camp he came across a bigger, better buck in the road and shot it. With the dilemma of two deer and one tag, he dumped the small buck and tagged the bigger one. Only reason I know all of this is because we came across the warden loading up the small buck in his truck. He had the guys rifle too.
So maybe that happened?