Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Biggest Whitetail Doe you’ve seen

Was bow hunting in southeastern Ohio from 10/31 to 11/4. Going back 11/10 to 11/13. My longtime friend and hunting Pard shot a doe Wednesday morning November 1st. One of the biggest does I’ve ever seen. She was probably 170 pounds on the hoof. Had a head like a horse. What’s the biggest doe you’ve seen.

Ron

The first doe that I shot in the UP was 182 before I gutted her. Does here in my neck of the woods might run 100 lbs. Those Michigan deer are big, for sure.

My wife shot one once that was about 150 live weight. Certainly one of the biggest I've seen

My wife killed one weighed 125 dressed, one of the bigger does I've run across. We always kept records of weight.........most bucks weighed on that same scale killed in rifle season after they've been run down struggle to hit that weight unless they've got some age on them then they're over that.

120 gutted, hide still on.

I tagged one here in Maine two years ago and she was 146 dressed if memory serves. Big gal. It was a good hunt because I jumped her and was able to lure her back with a grunt call. Saw her legs first slowly coming through a thicket. When she crossed me and was visible I fired. The usual lung shot reaction and down in about 30 yards.

We didn’t have means to weigh her, but the guy who processes our deer said he hasn’t seen a bigger doe. He has cut up a bunch of deer. On the floor of the cooler she didn’t look much smaller than 2 bucks that were already there.

Ron

My dad had the state deer check station at his convenience store for several years. I kept the books during evenings in high school so the gals didn’t have to deal with it. Biggest doe we ever checked was 124 dressed. Biggest I ever killed was 101 dressed and was the biggest on our books that year. Average here is around 85 dressed.

Checked one once that was 27lb dressed, smallest non spotted deer I ever saw. Guy got pissed when dad snickered at the scale and said, “it’ll be good eating”. Dad replied, “yeah for one meal”.

I was hunting on my buddies place just south of Mauston, WI using my Savage 99 in 300 Savage. I had factory Remington 150gr Core-Lokt fodder stuffed in it. Biggest doe I think I've ever seen went by and fell to the 150gr bullet. After tagging, I dressed it out, and got it out to where I could get my truck to it. Back then, I could pretty much get any deer up onto the tailgate of the truck, not this one. Ended up tieing off to the truck and pulling it out that way. When I got back to camp, my buddy helped me get it into the back of the truck so we could go to the check-in station. When my buddy walked up to the back of the truck, he said "you shot a cow elk!" It was a big deer and no scale to weigh it with. When we got to my buddy's parents house, where we cut the deer up, I tied a rope around its neck and we hoisted the deer up to the rafters so we could skin it out. Rafters are 8' above the floor. With the bottom of its head even with the bottom of the rafters, its hind legs were still on the floor, so over 8' of deer! Big ol dry doe that a lot of meat came off of!

Big!

Shot one with the bow that weighed 151.

My son and daughter have both shot monster does that were bigger than that. In northern WI and MN doe tags are lottery tags a lot of areas. So the get quite large up here and they’re big to start with because of the living conditions

I killed one here in LA this week that weighed 150 on the scales before gutting her.

By far the biggest I’d ever seen.

my dad (RIP) shot an old 9pt buck and after i field dressed it, took three of us to drag it 40ish yards. my dad got his truck and i was in the bed of the truck holding the rope, while my friend and Dad "lifted" the deer up. then i dragged the buck while they were lifting. i swear it took us 15 minutes to get the buck on the bed. grunting, groaning, swearing...you name it, we probably have it. we took the buck to my shop and chain hoisted him up. the next day, we skinned him and quartered him to take to my dad's house. he had a pile of meat. we took the backstraps and cut them up to a butterfly steak. my mom cooked them and it was like eating old shoe leather. even the deerburger was like an old shoe leather. for the next week, my mom went thru seasoning, roasts, chunks of meat in the, stew.........oh God, it was horrible. Dad would never waste meat, but it was close to going in the garbage. so we ate deer jerky that year. ALOT of deer jerky.

i killed an actual 160 pound live weight alabama doe. she was a buster ...

Similar experience here...bigger than some of the bucks at the shop. Best estimate was 140 pounds

Dang, and I thought I shot some small deer 🤣I poked a tiny one ~20 years ago and weighted it at the check station just for s&g... just shy of 40# field dressed.

We shot a bunch of puny deer for a few years. They were giving out antlerless tags like Halloween candy at the time, and the little ones are stupid 🤷‍♂️

From reading on 24 I never heard any stories about anything besides a ( big ol doe ).

128 lbs. when weighed in at the meat locker, so around 160 lbs. live weight.

A nice grain fed Nebraska whitetail.

I remember back in Vermont when I lived there, seeing a doe that pretty much covered a pickup truck bed.

Also saw some big ones while hunting it Saskatchewan

We've had several that weight 170+ live weight.

One year, that's how I ended up filling the freezer with 2 of them. I'll have to tell you that shooting the matriarch and her younger sister in the same spot a day or so apart really queered things for a long while. It was quite some time before I got to see a decent herd of doe out in front of that blind.

I killed a doe in northern NY state with my bow that weighed 175lbs field dressed. Same deal, she was real heavy to drag so we decided to weigh her. But northern deer are definitely bigger anyway in general.

Biggest I've personally seen was probably just over 100lbs here in Eastern N.C.
In my part of the world people tend to overestimate the weight of deer.

While I like to prove my marksmanship by shooting 55 pounders, the two biggest weighted (on certified scales) 146 dressed. One in Rhode Island and the other here in Maine.

I have shot two off of our lease that dressed 135 and 127 on the same morning. They had been living rent free on the 18k acre of beans and corn in the river bottoms to the east of our property.

I saw a doe in Montana near the Canada border this summer that was bigger than any buck I have ever killed in Tn. She was easily over 200 on the hoof. Her two fawns were huge also.

The biggest doe i have seen was shot by my bud, J.W. Hilbert. She was weighted after being dressed at 133lbs. he told me that when he saw the deer , he thought it was a buck that had dropped it's antlers, nope, it was a big doe.

At the VFW in Baudette, MN, circa 1989.

I killed one back home in Michigan when I was in my late teens during a deer drive. She was huge, she weighted 174 on a certified scale field dressed. DNR aged her at 6.5 years. Most does from that area hover around the 100lb mark dressed. What was funny is that my best friend killed a nice little 1.5 year old 7 pt on the same drive, same property. His buck weighted only 128lbs field dressed. We got a picture of them laying side bye side in the truck bed and that doe was easily another foot longer in body length. I might see if I can dig out that picture tonight when I get home.

Had 1 on the old place, we called her the "mule".

Big as a good sized buck.

First time I saw her, she walked under a feeder & her back height, was almost up to the feeder spinner !

I killed a 162lb and a friend killed a 164lb doe a few years apart, so far they've been the only does over 160lbs. Scales tell no tales. We've killed 100's of doe's between 120 - 150lbs off our place, sometimes I question if that's really been a good management practice. We've killed doe's on a 10+ to 1 buck ratio for the last 30 years.

Shot a big doe near Norridgewock, Maine in '81. On the way home we stopped at the check station in Kennebunk and she weighed 153 lbs. They said she was the 2nd biggest doe taken so far that season in Kennebec county. Think it was the 2nd week.

I killed one on my property that dressed 168# weighed with scale. She live about 50 yards off the busy road. She had at least 4 years where she produced triplets before going dry. It took me 2 years after that to get her. She was smart. I never got to age her jaw as something drug it off from outside my garage after I butchered her.

Camp is was in participated in the DMAP program for several years.

Every deer killed had live weight recorded.

A big doe for here is 120#.

AVG was prolly 100#.

Go up to north MS / delta where they still farm and the weights go up a good bit.

For comparison, a 180# buck here good size.

Almost 20 yrs or so ago i killed one that weighed 210#.

Huge body deer. Older. Not much for horns.

We used to kill some big does in Ohio in Wayne National Forest back in the Late 80s thru the 90s. Live weights 170-180. That seemed to change sometime after the big Ice storm they had in 2003/5. I cant recall exactly what year. After that ice storm the woods was messed up. I cant say definitively if the ice storm contributed to the does being significantly smaller but we never shot any huge does after that.

Most Does here in S.Texas average 112# to 115# I have killed a few over 120# but not many. Rio7

Here in northcentral LA I've seen a few at 135-145lbs. Big old horse heads on those. 150 is a whopper.

What State?

I don't know what the hell she weighed, but in 2019 I shot an absolute hog. She was every bit as big as my biggest bucks. She probably ranks in the top 5 biggest deer I've ever killed. My biggest buck weighed in at 164 dressed and she was damn near as big. She was dried up, had very few teeth left, and she had 2" of fat on her ass.

Later on January 31, 2020, in the last 15 minutes of that season, I shot another one that was almost as big.

I worked offshore with a guy from Columbia area.

He would say the old guys told him the deer they had were “northern” deer.

Brought down from Wisconsin ( or somewhere) way back when ( early /mid 1900’s) to get the deer herd going.

Resulted in bigger deer and the rut would start earlier compared to our deer in central MS.

Best i remember, their rut would be late Nov / early Dec.

Ours would be around late Dec / early Jan.

Any truth to it? 🤷🤷

Ive got no good pics and no scales, but i shot a nice fat doe last year on opening day out of a stand that has always been good to me. She was hefty, probably 160-170 on the hoof, we had her on the tall lift cleaning her, rafters are around 10' but can only lift 7, had to tie her to the other rafters otherwise she hung low to the ground. Sidenote, neighbors trespassed and took that stand down, not sure if intentional trespass or not since its a shared woods with no well defined boundaries in the woods. Trying to contact them so it can be back up by season this year, which starts in 2 weeks

Yes, I remember reading too - that states used deer from Wisconsin to restock their own herds.

I just googled it, and according to this article Mississippi "used 353 Wisconsin deer and 2,491 native deer in its restocking program..."

Article link - https://countryroadsmagazine.com/outdoors/knowing-nature/the-great-deer-comeback/

My parish (Union) used Wisconsin deer transplants in the 1960's. My maternal grandfather was the local Postmaster and they brought a trailer of those deer by for him to look at. A few years later my uncle killed the biggest buck they'd ever seen in this area. I think he scored in the 180's as a typical. This was in 1965 when he was 16 years old.

Correction: He was a 172" typical and a 204" gross.

Jpro,


Do yall have an earlier rut compared to others?

She was huge. I live in Ouachita Parish and killed her in Jackson Parish.

That's where one would expect to see the biggest of the bigs – the Dakota strain of deer are just different. I've hunted Saskatchewan a few times and have little doubt some of the does I'd seen were near 190-200 lbs. on-the-hoof.

Hey Scott......when are you headed to Kansas?

We have an accurate 800-pound freight scale, and the heaviest field-dressed Montana WT doe we've ever weighed went 105--which is a big one, but it wasn't taken "up north," whether in Montana or the bordering Canadian provinces. Have seen does when hunting Alberta and Manitoba that I'm sure were around 200 live weight.

I live in the UP. There are some huge mamas up here.

There is a giant doe on my property that we call Karen. She is going to the freezer this year. I would say she is 6+ and close to 200.

We should know within next few weeks.

i live in PA and i've shot several doe over the 150lbs average. of those big doe that i shot, it is around 175-185lbs. i killed a doe that was weighed at 221lbs field dressed.

Oklahoma Mike.

Yesterday my friend and I arrived in Northern New York (think Canadian border) to hunt for a while. I hunt his place in SC, and brought him up with me to see some big deer and meet people. He’s waking up to snow this morning.

Yesterday we arrived early enough to go out for an afternoon watch on the farm. One of the boys shot a doe that probably weighed 150+ field dressed. We didn’t put it on the scale, but have all put enough on scales over the years to have a good idea. We took John’s picture next to the doe hanging in the barn so he could show the guys back in SC. We have a picture of me with a SC doe, un gutted, holding it up at arms length for comparison.

Later, in the “club room” at the barn, my brother pointed to one of the groups of mounted heads on the wall and told John, “At least two of those bucks weighed over 195 field dressed.” There was a time we weighed big deer, but now seldom bother.

Post pics of the weight if ya can. I'd love to finally see the mysterious 200 pound doe. (dressed wt). Same with the 200 pound wolf....don't post a pic of that tho.

Pics?

We have a couple of ruts in north LA. While ours in the north central parishes (piney woods) is in the second half of November, the parishes in the NE corner have a run in December, even though they are only 90 minutes away in farm country (Miss river delta).

Two weeks from today.
Appears I'll be eating some tag sandwiches here in the north so hopefully I can break the spell there. And if not, the coyotes are going to catch hell.

I shot a doe early one morning in the middle of our state that weighed 142 lbs live weight. I thought she looked like a camel laid out on the ground. Our does generally run 90-100 for mature weights.

GreggH

unfortunately, no. this was back in pre-internet days, when i got the 221lbs doe. you know, when the phone was connect to your house, i had a 35mm that i could have taken pictures with and then go to photo shop, hand the film to a guy/girl and a week later you have them, but i didn't bother too. i don't take pictures much. it has to be something exciting to take a picture of. i guess i'm old.

I killed one about 1980 in Fairview Tennessee that weighed 162 and I think I saw her twin at my place in Hillsboro Alabama last season. Not many big does where I hunt but you do see one every now and then . Plenty of big bucks to make up the difference.