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Record Bucks of History

Joe_Cermele — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:59:08 -0400

Almost all of the deer in this gallery, and many more, can be found in A Whitetail Retrospective: Vintage Photos and Memorabilia from the Boone and Crockett Club Archives. We would like to thank the Boone and Crockett Club for having generously let us reproduce them here.

Racks From The Dead

Joe_Cermele — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 12:12:33 -0400

Take a look at the racks on some bucks recently found dead in the Midwest. It's a bittersweet find, but at least the animals are honored by shed hunters.

Whitetail 365 blogger Scott Bestul sent in these photos. Click here to weigh in on the subject of harvest racks from dead deer.

Monster Moose Racks

Joe_Cermele — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 12:02:39 -0500

Dream Bucks: Your Trophy Deer Photos From the 2005 Hunting Season

fieldandstream-editor — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 05:00:00 -0400

How to Judge a Buck: Can you guess the score of these 10 B&C trophies?

fieldandstream-editor — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 20:00:00 -0400

Success Story

fieldandstream-editor — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 04:05:00 -0500

I took this 12-pointer just before Christmas last year on my property near Athens, Ohio, where I hunt with my two boys. I might never have tagged the buck, though, if it wasn't for the nasty weather.

My buddy Rod Nutter and I had been hunting in the area for four rain-soaked days in a row, and my wife wanted me to get home. But with all the precipitation, a portion of the road leading back to my house was 5 feet underwater, and closed to traffic. So I called my wife and told her we were stuck. "A likely story," she said. Then Rod and I hurried to the woods for another afternoon hunt.

I was in a stand overlooking a power-line clearing planted in clover when a couple of does came out and started milling around. I didn't hear anything that drew my attention. Rather, I just happened to turn my head, and there stood this big buck near a deadfall at the edge of the clearing.

At first glance, I knew he was a shooter. At second glance, he looked awfully familiar-and in an instant I realized it was the same buck whose sheds from the previous two years were sitting in my office at home. I also had pictures of him on my scouting camera from earlier in the hunting season. Now, he was 45 yards away and walking toward me.

When he stepped out broadside from behind a cedar tree at 30 yards, I took what I felt was a good shot with my bow. Still, I waited until dark before going after him. With Rod helping me track, we found that the buck didn't go any more than 45 yards before he dropped. It was a perfect double-lung hit.

Though I'd seen the buck before, he looked even more impressive close up. He grossed 175 inches and netted 168, easily making the Pope and Young standard of 125 and the Buckeye Big Buck Club mark of 140. But even before I learned that, I knew it was the biggest buck I'd ever tagged-and I couldn't have been more excited.

We want Your trophy Buck. Got a success story about a buck you killed this fall? Send a picture of your deer and a short description of your hunt to mybuckfs@yahoo.com.

Rack Up the Points

fieldandstream-editor — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 05:05:00 -0400

Your buck is down, and it's a brute. But what will it score? You'll need to wait 60 days for the antlers to dry to see if it's a record (the net score, which deducts points for asymmetry and extra kickers, is the only number you'll get into the B&C books). But most hunters and wildlife biologists only calculate the gross "green" score anyway, since it adds every inch of bone to the total. And with a flexible tape measure, you can take it right there in the field. -Gerald Almy

[BRACKET "1"] MEASURE the inside spread at the widest point between the main beams. Make sure your tape measure is perpendicular to the length of the skull and parallel to the top of the head. Round all measurements to the nearest 1/8 inch.

[BRACKET "2"] PLACE the tape at the burr edge and run it along the middle of the main beam on the outside, all the way to the center of the last tip. Repeat on the other side of the rack.

[BRACKET "3"] MEASURE the tines from where they emerge off the main beam along the outside of their curvature. Start with the brow tine (called the G1), then the next point (G2), and so on. Then record all abnormal points. Only count points longer than 1 inch.

[BRACKET "4"] MEASURE the circumference (mass) of each antler in four spots: roughly halfway (or at the narrowest spot) between the burr and the brow tine, the first and second points, the second and third points, and the third and fourth points. If the buck is an 8-pointer and doesn't have a fourth tine jutting off the main beam, take the measurement halfway between the middle of the third point and the tip of the antler.

[BRACKET "5"] ADD all the measurements for the final gross score.

For more information on scoring, contact the Boone and Crockett Club, 406-542-1888; boone-crockett.org; Safari Club International, 520-620-1220; safariclub.org; or Buckmasters, 334-215-3337; buckmasters.com.

Wrong About the Rut

fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 05:20:00 -0400

The whitetail rut is one of the most studied phenomena in hunting, so you'd think we'd have had it all figured out long ago. But no-only recently, with the boom in deer populations and the growing popularity of trophy deer hunting, have many of the finer points of the whitetail breeding season been closely examined by biologists and observed by hardcore hunters. We may not have it all worked out yet, but we understand the rut much better today than we did only a couple of decades ago.

Just like old habits, though, traditional ideas about the rut are hard to break away from. Here are five persistent misconceptions about the whitetail's breeding season.

Understanding the real facts can help you fill your tag now.

Myth #1 The peak rut is the best time to take a buck. It's easy to have a Pavlovian response to the words peak rut. We can't help it. Decades of magazine articles and deer-camp conversations have created a conditioned response that makes us take our vacations during the height of the whitetail breeding season.

Instead, we should be taking off a little earlier. Bucks are actually most mobile and vulnerable just prior to the most intense breeding activity, during a seven- to 10-day period called the "seeking" or "chasing" phase of the rut. By contrast, the very heart of the whitetail breeding season can bring some pretty lousy hunting because a large percentage of bucks are likely to be holed up with receptive does.

According to noted biologist and whitetail expert Grant Woods, the seeking and chasing phase is a time when bucks are raring to go but few does are yet in estrus. As a result, anxious bucks can be found on their feet at almost any time of day-checking scrapes, making rubs, and seeking and chasing does. "For anyone who knows their hunting area and its deer well," Woods says, "this is the best time to take a buck." My own experience has certainly confirmed this: The last four trophy bucks I've killed with my bow have all fallen during the seeking and chasing phase. I'd choose that period to hunt instead of the peak rut every time.

Myth #2 Rutting bucks are impossible to pattern. Deer hunters rarely complain about the rut, but when they do, this is usually their gripe. It happens because once does begin coming into estrus, bucks do indeed leave their home areas, abandon their rub lines and scrapes, and begin traipsing over the countryside in search of ready mates.

But bucks don't wander haphazardly. Rather, they move quite predictably from one doe family group to another. Larger bucks especially, which travel less than immature ones, will almost never be far from the females. So, just as you might set up near a rub line during the early season, now you need to find the does and stay close by.

Stephen F. Austin State University researcher and noted whitetail expert James Kroll does just that. "I try to work out the movement patterns of as many does as possible during the preseason. When a buck shows up in these areas during the rut, he will be in attendance for the next day or so, and there will be other bucks in the vicinity as well." In other words, Kroll patterns the bucks by patterning the does.

Myth #3 When the action is over, the rut is over. Just about every serious whitetail hunter has spent days watching deerless woods in mid-November and thought, The rut must be over. More likely, it is at its apex. Today's expert hunters refer to this peak-rut lull as the "lockdown," and it's one of the most difficult times to fill your tag.

When a buck senses that a doe is coming into estrus, he chases her into an area of remote or rugged cover where other bucks are less likely to find her. Once there, he'll "tend" the doe-that is, mate with and stay near her-until she no longer accepts him. In the meantime, the pair moves very little. The result is an overall slowdown in the action. But the rut isn't done. A little patieence, in fact, can pay off very handsomely because some bucks will resume actively seeking does soon.

Myth #4 You might as well stay home during the post-rut. Not if you want to tag a trophy. Although it's almost certain that you'll see fewer bucks immediately after peak breeding than you would during the seeking and chasing phase, recent research by Mickey Hellickson, chief biologist at Texas' renowned King Ranch, has revealed an excellent reason to keep hunting-and to bring a set of rattling horns with you.

"We rattled to deer during three specific periods: just prior to peak breeding, during peak breeding, and for several weeks after," Hellickson says. "While the number of responses in the post-breeding period wasn't as high, the deer that responded were much more likely to be mature. These bucks are still actively seeking does."

This study mirrors the experience of Iowa whitetail expert and videographer Don Kisky, who has shot some of his best bucks during the post-rut. "If I see a buck in that week or so after the lockdown period, it's usually a nice one," he says. "And in each case, the big deer I've killed then were moving from 10:30 A.M. to 2:30 P.M. If you can stay on stand all day, or at least through the midday period, you can definitely kill a monster whitetail."

Myth #5 The primary rut lasts about a month. This is Nature's plan, as whitetail does have a roughly 28-day estrous cycle. But when doe numbers get out of control, which is a problem in many areas, the rut can last far longer than that. Biologist Grant Woods studied a property in New York's Adirondacks where hunters had harvested almost no does for years. "The rut there lasted nearly four months," he says. "In contrast, we studied a more balanced deer herd in Georgia and found that 95 percent of does were bred within a four-week period, with 50 to 60 percent of that breeding occurring during a 10-day spike."

Why does this matter? "There are many advantages, both for deer and hunters, when the rut is intense and concentrated, as it usually is in a balanced herd," Woods says. "A short rut is less stressful on bucks, for example, allowing them to recover and survive the winter better. Hunters benefit because they see much more intense rutting behavior, which makes most modern rut tactics-including rattling, calling, and using scents-more effective."

On the other hand, if your area has a low buck-to-doe ratio, the rut will probably last longer, but aggressive tactics are less likely to work. Instead, still-hunt the fringes of doe feeding areas or sit all day on a funnel leading to these spots. Patience is the key-and the belief that during the rut, your luck can turn at any second.