Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting I want to shoot a big bodied deer

I killed one here in NY that weighed 195 dressed after hanging for 5 days. The butcher at the weigh station where I entered it in a big buck contest told me if I'd have brought it in the day I killed it, it would have been 10-20 lbs heavier. Oh well, had to work and didn't have time. Won the big buck contest that year anyway so it really didn't matter. Over the years I've seen quite a few taken in the Catskill region that dressed over 200. Two hogs one year taken off the same mountain on the same day were impressive. One dressed 205 and the other 215. Another big one taken by the former deer hunting forum moderator on the old Huntamerica website dressed 255. I saw one the season before last that I'm sure would have been well over 200. I had him dead to rights If I wanted him. Trouble is, he was 75 yards across a property line on land I didn't have permission to hunt. He stood still as a statue staring at me for what must have been at least a full minute while I studied him through my scope trying to decide if it was worth paying a trespassing fine and/or trying to bribe the owner of the land to let me keep the buck and forget the charges. It was a tough decision but after staring at each other for a spell he turned and I watched him walk away. He easily would have been the biggest buck I'd ever killed in both body and antler if I'd have pulled the trigger. Be that as it may, bucks that size are very rare here and I wouldn't recommend anyone come here specifically looking for one as they very well could hunt for a lifetime and never see one.

Stand on tailgate, reach over, grab antlers, pull the deer up. Once the shoulders are to/over the edge - pull deer into bed.
Though I'm sure the big deer you fellers are referring to are of much grander scale.

Captain Obvious is that you?

SKane, awesome buck and a great pic. Sure is a hoss in my book.

Blackheart: not trying to start something, serious question. I thought you said, or at least I thought I recalled, that permission was not required to hunt on private land in your area.

Come on up to Saskatchewan. The deer are scary big.

Getting the shoulders over the tail gate is the hard part!

Go shoot an elk..

East central is where I live and I'd say if you are talking 3,000 acres in Shawano or Door County, you are in some nice area. I went to school in Stevens Point and hunted Portage County and that is sand area with lots of deer, but not really big body or rack sizes. Buffalo leads the nation in B&C bucks, but it is all private and mega dollars to pay to play. I prefer to take my chances in the big woods away from people in the north west and there are some real horses up there if the wolves don't get them. I'm sure that I drive past better areas than I hunt, but I don't have a buddy with 3,000 acres. The gun season here is post rut and most of the big breeder bucks are doing what you do after getting it on... sleeping.

Elevation has a similar effect as latitude on body size. The two biggest-bodied bucks I've killed were both mule deer, one in Montana at timberline along the Rocky Mountain Front, and a prairie buck in Alberta, about 300 miles north of the border.

I didn't get to weigh the mountain buck, but the biggest Montana mule deer I've weighed was another mountain buck taken near the Idaho panhandle, which weighed 232 field-dressed after hanging for a week, probably 250 before hanging. With the standard deer formula of multiplying field-dressed weight by 1.25, the buck would have been around 310 live weight.

The Front buck was MUCH bigger, and I did measure the chest depth from back to brisket, which was around 21-22". Most mature mule deer bucks measure around 18 inches. His body also measured just about as the same size as a 1-1/2-year-old cow elk my wife killed a couple weeks later.

I didn't get to weigh the Alberta buck whole or field-dressed, but boned him out before driving back to Montana and got 130 pounds of meat. The rule-of-thumb is that boned meat is about 1/3 the live weight of a deer, so if he wasn't 400 on the hoof, he was close. My wife killed a mule deer buck on the same Alberta hunt that was almost as big, and my first Alberta mule deer, taken back in 1993, was about the same size as Eileen's.

The biggest-bodied Montana mule deer ever officially weighed was 453 pounds whole, and 340 field-dressed, but
but Montana whitetails don't get as large as mule deer. The biggest officially weighed went 375 whole and 275 dressed, but I've only seen a handful of Montana whitetail bucks that went over 200 dressed. On a Manitoba whitetail hunt, made the fall after a bad winterkill, one of my hunting companions killed a young forkhorn that field-dressed around 210 pounds.

In Minnesota near the Canadian border 2016 December 20th, 15 below zero I shot my biggest whitetail buck with my Barnsdale bow that still dressed 220 lbs. ,deer was a long big deer and had lost a lot of weight during the rutt, this buck was either 300 lbs more or less alive in the early fall. deer had a very nice big thick 8 pt. rack too,probably score 145 or more ? at my age of 65 years shooting big bucks does not happen every year,not sure of my exact number of bucks over 200 lbs. probably dozen ,not sure ? last year I did see a huge old thick forkhorn huge muledeer buck the day after a shot a nice 5x5 muley in Montana next to the Canadian border that probably weighed close to 400 lbs. live weight with a friend from Montana who knows deer size well,biggest deer I ever have seen ! if he`s alive next year ? who knows ?

Never said that. Dementia or Alzheimers ?

That's a BFB. Especially at that time of year.

I think I just pee'd a little.

at Camp Ripley in Minnesota 30 some years ago when Camp Ripley was open in december for bowhunting a bowhunter killed a buck that dressed right around 278 lbs and the next big buck was like 230 lbs. dressed ,I seen both of them, that 278 lb. big was a brute! where I hunt I have seen 2 bucks bigger than the one I bow shot over a few years never got a shot.

?????

could be either, or both

With all due respect, that deer doesn't look that big. Most of our bucks here are as big, some bigger

....point missed...