Ever wonder what it takes to kill a big buck? I mean, like an all-time top-five whitetail deer? First, live in the Midwest. Second, be in the right place at the right time. Here are the stories and photos behind the top five biggest free-range deer ever to make it in the record book. All of these big buck deer photos are courtesy of the Boone and Crockett Club.
#1 Missouri: World Record Whitetail Deer
Score: 333-7/8
Year: 1981
Plenty of deer give hunters heartburn, and the deer you’re about to read about became a real pain after it died.
In early November 1981, David Beckman met game warden Michael Helland along a road in northern St. Louis County, Missouri. Beckman asked Holland to check the deer he killed, saving him a drive to an official check station. Helland checked the deer, and Beckman drove away. On the drive home, Beckman spotted a dead buck lying inside a fence along the road. Most folks aren’t going to stop for any old deer, but Beckman saw this was anything but an ordinary deer.
Beckman received permission from the landowner to retrieve the deer, but the state of Missouri took the deer, whose rack weighed more than 11 pounds. Curiously, it had few teeth left in its head, and the lower jaw was set back about three inches from the upper jaw. Officials aged the deer at 5 ½ years old.
When a Boone and Crockett Official Measurer came up with an initial score of 325-7/8 points, it eclipsed the then-nontypical whitetail record of 284-3/8, which belonged to a Texas buck reportedly killed in 1892. When word got out that this Missouri buck would ascend to the top spot, all hell broke loose, and the rumors started to fly.
The most notable objection came from Horace Gore of the Texas Trophy Hunters Association. In 2003, Gore wrote a story in the Journal of the Texas Trophy Hunters that outlined his reasons why the Missouri buck shouldn’t be the new World Record. Gore produced an elaborate story about how the deer had died in the back of a livestock trailer during transport. The brothers hauling the deer did not have the proper paperwork and tossed the buck—antlers and all—on the side of the road. “After tying all the loose ends together,” Gore writes, “I am convinced that the so-called Missouri Monarch was reared in a deer pen near Bemidji, Minnesota. However, this is just my opinion.”
Boone and Crockett Club officials investigated the allegations that this was a pen-raised buck. They stated that should any hard evidence indicate that this buck was anything but a wild deer, they would take immediate steps to correct the record. The evidence never came. Once B&C officials received assurance from the Missouri Department of Conservation that this was indeed a free-ranging buck, they considered the case closed. Today, the buck remains the property of the Missouri Department of Conservation and is on public display.
#2 Ohio: Hole in the Horn Buck
Score: 328-2/8
Year: 1940
Big antlers bring big drama. The second-largest whitetail ever entered into the Boone and Crockett Records is proof of that. The drama started when antler collector Dick Idol received a tip from another collector that there was a Medusa-like whitetail of epic proportions hanging in the Kent Canadian Club in Kent, Ohio. Wasting no time, Idol examined the deer, thought it might be a new World Record, and made a deal to buy the buck from the private hunting club in 1983. Idol named it the “Hole in the Horn Buck,” but more on that in a bit.
The life story on this buck is less dramatic than its afterlife. In 1940, railroad workers stumbled upon the carcass, which was stuck under a chain-link fence. They assumed a train hit the deer, and a local taxidermist provided a shoulder mount. It hung watch over patrons at the Kent Canadian Club until Idol bought it.
Being an avid collector, Idol got Boone and Crockett Club Official Measurer Phil Wright to run a tape over the antlers. After what must have seemed like hours (because it likely did take that long to measure 45 points), Wright tallied a net score of 342-3/8 points—more than eight inches over the Missouri Monarch. With this initial measurement, Idol declared the buck the greatest of all time. As publisher of North American Whitetail magazine, Idol ran a photo of the buck with the words “World Record Shattered!!!” on the cover of the December 1983 issue.
If you follow antler records, you know the difference between an entry measurement and a final measurement conducted by a panel of Boone and Crockett measurers. Had those judges agreed with the original score, the buck would have shattered the previous record. The panel of judges did not agree with the final score. The panel score was lower, and the buck took the number two spot. The difference of opinion was a matter of interpretation. “The slightly lower score,” according to the records, “…is explained by the necessary interpretation of several points on the beam as being either typical or nontypical.”
As for that mysterious namesake hole in the antlers, writer Gordon Whittington investigated the origins of that hole for a 2015 article in North American Whitetail. One eyewitness to the buck’s recovery in 1940 stated that a piece of wire fence was sticking through the hole. But alas, another eyewitness to this holiest or holes claimed to know the true origin story. A bartender at the Kent Canadian Club said the club manager was annoyed that the mount was always crooked because it was attached to some lattice. With a quarter-inch drill bit, the manager drilled a hole right through the antlers, pushed a wire through, and straightened that buck out. Today, Bass Pro Shops is the owner of this magnificent beast, and they do not hang with a wire through the antlers.
#3 Illinois: Brewster Buck
Score: 327-7/8
Year: 2018
Thanks to Luke Brewster, the record books finally have a top-five deer killed by a hunter. Virginia bowhunter Luke Brewster is what the hunting world today likes to call an adult-onset hunter. That’s what the “experts” call hunters who pick up a bow or gun after they learn what 401K means. Brewster grew up fishing, not hunting. His dad, though, did like to chase deer with a muzzleloader. After serving in the Marine Corps in Afghanistan, Brewster returned to his old fishing spots, and friends got him into deer hunting. Eventually, he gravitated toward bowhunting. At first, he killed a couple of does, then shot his first archery buck in 2017, a 2.5-year-old 10-pointer.
Brewster’s dad had a 40-acre farm in Illinois. According to the Boone and Crockett records, if you’re going to have whitetail property, Illinois is the place to have it. A farmer leased the property, and Luke met the farmer’s sons and sons-in-law who hunted it. The guys hit it off immediately. They showed Brewster around the farm, gave him bowhunting tips, and most importantly, showed him trail camera photos of a buck growing up before their eyes.
The trail cameras often picked up one particular buck in 2014. By 2016, Mufasa, as it was known to the hunters, had grown into an absolute stud shooter buck. In 2017, one of the hunters took a shot at Mufasa, but his arrow was deflected by a branch, resulting in a clean miss. Mufasa wasn’t seen the rest of the year.
In 2018, Brewster joined the boys on the farm for an early-November hunt. He climbed into a stand that hadn’t been hunted much, but a scrape was nearby. After sitting for four hours, Brewster watched two does approach the stand. They were jittery, and they had good reason. Thirty yards away stood Mufasa. Brewster quietly drew his bow and released. The buck bounded away. After waiting 30 minutes, he climbed down from his stand and found Mufasa piled up only 40 yards away. “I took a picture of him, sent it to the guys, and sat down, just in awe as I looked at him,” he told Game & Fish Magazine. “I picked up his rack, and I just couldn’t believe what I was holding. It felt like a dream.”
According to the Boone and Crockett score chart, the buck has 39 scorable points and a total of 186-4/8 inches worth of abnormal points. With a gross score of 337-1/8 points and a final score of 327-7/8 points, the Brewster Buck is officially the Pope and Young World Record non-typical whitetail and the largest hunter-killed whitetail buck in the Boone and Crockett Records.
#4 Kansas: Butcher Buck
Score: 321-3/8
Year: 2019
With three points on the right antler and a whopping 64 points on the left, this deer will make any hunter do a double-take. For Brian Butcher, he was able to keep his composure on this Chase County, Kansas monster.
In April 2019, Brian Butcher’s trail camera captured a photo of this buck, but it was too early to tell what it would grow into. In early October, the two would cross paths again. On October 11, Butcher and a friend went to trim shooting lanes where they had recently hung a treestand. Walking into the spot, they bumped a few deer. After 30 minutes of cutting, his friend left, and Butcher climbed into the stand, hoping to get a feel for the area.
Butcher got settled, and not 15 minutes later, a small buck showed up to browse. An hour later, another buck came in. This time it was a nine-pointer. Eating the leaves from the freshly trimmed limbs, the buck walked around the base of Butcher’s stand for about 30 minutes. A short while later, two more bucks came into view, and the hunt got interesting.
The first buck was small, but the second buck “looked like there was bailing twine or a small bush caught in his antlers,” Butcher wrote for a story in the Boone and Crockett Club’s 31st Big Game Awards book. Like Medusa of Greek mythology, the buck paralyzed Butcher. He couldn’t stop staring at the antlers trying to figure out what was going on with that headgear. He brought himself back to reality and focused on the buck’s vitals. At 25 yards, the buck presented Butcher with a shot. His arrow zipped through both lungs.
Excited, Butcher waited about 10 minutes before climbing down from the stand. He found fur at the point of impact. A few feet away, he found his arrow covered in frothy blood. “My confidence was climbing as I picked up the blood trail and followed the red carpet for about 35 yards,” he recalled. “There he was. I took in the moment while thinking, what in the heck is this thing?”
That thing would take measurers five hours to score. According to the Boone and Crockett score sheet, that thing has 245-1/8 inches of abnormal points and a gross score of 343-4/8 points. The final net score is 321-3/8 points, making it the largest whitetail recorded in Kansas. The second-largest Kansas buck scores more than 20 points less than the Butcher buck.
#5 Tennessee: Tucker Buck
Score: 315-1/8
Year: 2016
Few hunters get second chances on a buck like this. Stephen Tucker is one of the few.
In September 2016, Tucker was driving a tractor back to the farm when he got a call on his cell phone. It was his uncle right behind him. He excitedly told Tucker to check out a buck coming straight at him. At first, Tucker thought the buck had a bunch of corn husks stuck in its antlers. It turns out that was all-natural headgear. He’d never seen that deer on the farm before.
Borrowing one trail camera and buying another, Tucker was soon on a mission. He captured the buck on camera a few times, and he decided to hunt the buck during Tennessee’s November muzzleloader season. On the opener, he crawled into his hunting blind well before dawn. Like clockwork, the buck appeared at his scrape. Tucker aimed and squeezed the trigger. The primer went off, but that was it. The buck looked over, but it didn’t spook. Tucker spotted the buck again in the afternoon, but it was beyond his effective range.
On Monday morning, he returned to the blind. Sure enough, the big buck returned, and he was only 40 yards away. When he pulled the trigger, smoke filled the blind. The buck ran into a thicket. After waiting an hour, he and his brother-in-law found just a little blood, then a lot of blood. Then they saw what would be the largest hunter-killed buck until Brewster killed his Illionois giant.
PJ DelHomme is a writer and editor in western Montana. He runs this website, Crazy Canyon Journal, as well as Crazy Canyon Media.
