potential new world record NT

[wtnhunt]

We heard about the deer about a month and a half ago.  Was taken about 2 hours east of here.  twra announced the 47 point non typical would be a new state record after the initial scoring. Here is a pretty good article http://www.fieldandstream.com/stephen-tucker-buck-new-world-record-from-tennessee. 

http://www.tennessean.com/story/sports/2017/01/09/deer-sumner-wold-record/96348008/ after the 60 day drying period they came in 312 inches. 

[MUDRUNNER]

Yea I got that a few months ago too. They say that the deer was only 3 1/2 years old, which seems a little odd. I remember wondering if maybe it had escaped a deer farm. It's hard to imagine a 3 year old free range deer scoring that high lol.

[wtnhunt]

38 minutes ago, MUDRUNNER said:

Yea I got that a few months ago too. They say that the deer was only 3 1/2 years old, which seems a little odd. I remember wondering if maybe it had escaped a deer farm. It's hard to imagine a 3 year old free range deer scoring that high lol.

The twra warden who initially scored the deer said it was a 4.5 year old.  Even still looking at the tc pics on the fs article, a 3.5 year old I don't think so.  He said it was only 150 lbs, gonna guess that was dressed weight, would put the deer about 190 live weight which is usually consistent with 4.5 year olds.  

Was also some controversy over the deer possibly being taken in city limits, legal in some places with archery and muzzleloader. Other properties had some hunters who also knew the deer was there.  Wife has told me about a lot of crap on facebook about it, nother reason not to do facebook.  lol. Would tend to think if it had been an escaped deer farm deer that someone would have spoke up by now. 

Honestly not that hard to believe, central Ky had been producing some booners and state line from there is not too terribly far.   

Wife asked me if the nt points could be a result of something being sprayed on the crops.  

[Rhino]

It seems like there is usually some type of controversy with someone spreading false rumors whenever a huge buck is killed.  Always a good idea to get good documentation whenever you kill a big one legally to cover yourself.

If you've ever looked at the story behind the Hanson buck you'd see it was aged as a 3.5 year old buck.  Pretty amazing!

[dbHunterNY]

2 hours ago, Rhino said:

It seems like there is usually some type of controversy with someone spreading false rumors whenever a huge buck is killed.  Always a good idea to get good documentation whenever you kill a big one legally to cover yourself.

If you've ever looked at the story behind the Hanson buck you'd see it was aged as a 3.5 year old buck.  Pretty amazing!

hey Al there's a lot of rumors and here say surrounding world record bucks.  I known i'm splitting hairs a bit but that some more reliable sources i know of aged it at 4.5 yrs old.  I know that a very respected whitetail biologist that i've met that actually was a guest at Milo's home.  Milo showed him the jawbone and he was pretty set on it being 4.5 yrs old.  Makes sense though.  at 4.5 yrs old a buck can get pretty close to peak antler growth.  hard to say where the aging is coming from and how reliable it is for this TN buck.  if it was only 3.5 yrs old that's crazy big even for a world record.  research by TX and MS universities has been done concluding that age buck (3.5) is extremely likely to get to at most just shy of 80% of its maximum potential antler growth.  to think this buck could've piled on dozens of more inches isn't even something i can wrap my head around.

[dbHunterNY]

those center two incisors to send into a lab and the jawbone full of teeth to look at would be like gold to me.  i hope he kept them both.

[wtnhunt]

1 hour ago, dbHunterNY said:

hey Al there's a lot of rumors and here say surrounding world record bucks.  I known i'm splitting hairs a bit but that some more reliable sources i know of aged it at 4.5 yrs old.  I know that a very respected whitetail biologist that i've met that actually was a guest at Milo's home.  Milo showed him the jawbone and he was pretty set on it being 4.5 yrs old.  Makes sense though.  at 4.5 yrs old a buck can get pretty close to peak antler growth.  hard to say where the aging is coming from and how reliable it is for this TN buck.  if it was only 3.5 yrs old that's crazy big even for a world record.  research by TX and MS universities has been done concluding that age buck (3.5) is extremely likely to get to at most just shy of 80% of its maximum potential antler growth.  to think this buck could've piled on dozens of more inches isn't even something i can wrap my head around.

Quote

He called a local game warden for advice, who put him in touch with Capt. Dale Grandstaff with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. Grandstaff is an official Boone & Crockett measurer. He met with Tucker that night.

An official measurer since 2003, Grandstaff has scored a lot of deer—“but not many over 200 inches,” he says. “I’d seen trail camera photos of this buck two weeks before Tucker killed it. I thought it would go over 250—but I never dreamed it would break 300. I was pretty sure it had the potential to be the new state record. I wasn’t thinking about the world record.”

Grandstaff notes that the current state-record buck was also killed in Sumner County, not far from the Tucker buck. That deer was taken by David Wachtel, also with a muzzleloader. It had 49 scoreable points. “That area produces some really big deer,” Grandstaff says. “That’s one of the most common questions I’ve gotten about Stephen Tucker’s buck. People say, ‘Do you think that’s a real Tennessee deer?’ There’s no reason to believe that it isn’t."

Grandstaff came up with a gross score of 313 2/8 inches, and a net score of 308 2/8 inches. If that green score holds, the Tucker buck will just beat the current world-record non-typical, which was shot in Iowa in 2003 and netted 307 5/8. Grandstaff aged the buck at 4 ½ years old.

Copied the above from the field and stream article.  Looking at all the pic of the deer and not looking at the antlers it looks like a 4.5 or older Tennessee deer to me.  

[Strut10]

7 hours ago, Rhino said:

If you've ever looked at the story behind the Hanson buck you'd see it was aged as a 3.5 year old buck.  Pretty amazing!

Although nothing close to the Hanson buck............ the best buck ever actually killed on the Strut10 Ranch was a 3.5 year (biologist aged) deer.............. a 153" 8 pointer.

We had another DANDY buck that we documented with trailcam pics at 1.5 through 5.5 years.  His PEAK antler score came at 3.5 years of age.

[fly]

I could see the deer growing that rack at 3.5 or 4.5 years of age. It could be a tumor or something biologic that resulted in excessive hormones that are responsible for antler growth.

[Shaun_300]

Wow! I don't know if I could stay calm if something like that came out to me lol.

Biggest I've seen around here was the one in my avatar, saw him out in the field during the summer with 2 other bucks, then on my trail cam. Last I saw him was Halloween night in 2015, 2 days before rifle season that year.

[dbHunterNY]

On 1/10/2017 at 5:39 PM, wtnhunt said:

Copied the above from the field and stream article.  Looking at all the pic of the deer and not looking at the antlers it looks like a 4.5 or older Tennessee deer to me.  

didn't catch your posts that it was thought to be 4.5 yrs old.  150lbs dressed is more consistent with a 2.5 or 3.5 yr old up this way in NY.  deer still age the pretty much the same though development wise.  looks older than 3.5 yrs old in the trail cam photo.  developed front to back all the same.  neck filled out and hitting low on the brisket, among other things.  3.5 yr olds are less developed in their rear half than the front half.  a little harder to see in better conditioned healthy deer leading into the rut.

[wtnhunt]

2 hours ago, dbHunterNY said:

didn't catch your posts that it was thought to be 4.5 yrs old.  150lbs dressed is more consistent with a 2.5 or 3.5 yr old up this way in NY.  deer still age the pretty much the same though development wise.  looks older than 3.5 yrs old in the trail cam photo.  developed front to back all the same.  neck filled out and hitting low on the brisket, among other things.  3.5 yr olds are less developed in their rear half than the front half.  a little harder to see in better conditioned healthy deer leading into the rut.

Right Dan, there were conflicting ages between articles.  I never was able to find who it was that suggested the deer was only 3.5 other than the hunter.  The twra veteran scorer who obviously had pretty extensive knowledge of deer said the deer was a 4.5 year old buck.  If you took away all the junk points it would probably look pretty typical in mass, beam lengths, and tine lengths of a TN 4.5 year old.  

Gotta remember too here that the subspecies of deer here are mixed and more often than not a 4.5 year old deer won't be over 200 lbs on the hoof.

[dbHunterNY]

On 1/12/2017 at 0:53 PM, wtnhunt said:

Right Dan, there were conflicting ages between articles.  I never was able to find who it was that suggested the deer was only 3.5 other than the hunter.  The twra veteran scorer who obviously had pretty extensive knowledge of deer said the deer was a 4.5 year old buck.  If you took away all the junk points it would probably look pretty typical in mass, beam lengths, and tine lengths of a TN 4.5 year old.  

Gotta remember too here that the subspecies of deer here are mixed and more often than not a 4.5 year old deer won't be over 200 lbs on the hoof.

yea that's more having to do with what Bergman's rule points out but all the different sub-species of whitetail age the same way.  characteristics definitely had me thinking older at 4.5 yrs old.  not an exact science obviously but if you know what to watch out for and get enough practice on bucks with a verified age to get surprisingly accurate.

[Rhino]

The cover story on North American Whitetail this month is..."Tennessee Shocks the World!"  The article says the unofficial green net score of this 47 point NT is 308 3/8.

[wtnhunt]

On 1/26/2017 at 3:51 PM, dbHunterNY said:

yea that's more having to do with what Bergman's rule points out but all the different sub-species of whitetail age the same way.  characteristics definitely had me thinking older at 4.5 yrs old.  not an exact science obviously but if you know what to watch out for and get enough practice on bucks with a verified age to get surprisingly accurate.

These are not borealis or Dakota subspecies deer, so would not expect them to ever reach 350-400 lbs, just like a key deer are not gonna go over 200 lbs.  Yes, Bergmann's rule, the further north the heavier the animals will typically be, makes sense since it is colder further north and more reserves will help an animal through that cold in the winter.  Gonna guess the first scorer(the Captain from the Tennessee wildlife resource agency) who aged the deer probably nailed the age at 4.5, he was only an eighth off the officials score so he must know something about deer.  

Still have to wonder about my wife's comment on this especially with all the discussion of "franken foods".  What kind of fertilizers and pest/herbicides were they using that got into the drain this deer was living in?  Could there have been some sort of freak mutation similar to cancer as a result causing the deer to have so many irregular points.  Maybe not so far fetched? 

[dbHunterNY]

30 minutes ago, wtnhunt said:

.....Still have to wonder about my wife's comment on this especially with all the discussion of "franken foods".  What kind of fertilizers and pest/herbicides were they using that got into the drain this deer was living in?  Could there have been some sort of freak mutation similar to cancer as a result causing the deer to have so many irregular points.  Maybe not so far fetched? 

yea william, who knows what things factored in if something caused a "mutation" like that.  honestly, if something like that was the cause i hope we never find out.  otherwise, knuckle heads will be laying waste to the country side, dumping all the stuff in their food plots. lol  i'll just stick with assumptions of genetic anomaly, paired with consecutive years of deer generations in it's blood line that had access to great nutrition from ag ground.

[Rhino]

Seriously doubt it's anything to do with herbicides or franken foods.  Just a freak of nature...they happen.

For example Tony Fulton holds the Mississippi NT record with a 295 6/8" net score taken during the 1994-95 season.  The 2nd place Mississippi NT buck scores 225 even...over 70" smaller!

Tony Fulton's buck

 

Then you have the Missouri Monarch that was found dead in St. Louis County (of all places).  It has a net NT score of 333 7/8"

These freaks of nature just happen from time to time in many states and sometimes we hear about them.  I bet there are some that die of old age we never hear about too.

[wtnhunt]

Saw an article where it was being said this was NOT being recorded in the boone and crockett records as the new world record NT whitetail, but was rather #3, putting him behind 2 deer NOT killed by hunters.  Still the number 1 killed by a hunter, still should count as the world record in my view.