Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Actual weighed deer weight

Yep they go by weight. Typically the winners are in the 240+ range. Up the MN Northshore is where they start getting really big. 260+ isn't unheard of at all.

The contests in WI are usually points and inside spread, like yours.

Pretty close - 283#.
I shot him when the does were just starting to smell good. A couple of weeks later and he'd gone on a crash diet.

I know the MN state record is 402 pounds dressed weight. I think WI is somewhere in the mid 300's. for dressed weight IIRC.

It's true. It takes a lot of animal to dress north of 200#. A buck that dresses 200# during or post-rut is a real stud.

This one has been posted here a few of times over the years. I shot him in Ontario a week prior to the buck above (Manitoba).
Get them prior to the rut in the north and they're gonna be beefers.

Weighs more or less than the previous buck?

Those are two immense Canadian bucks, Scott.

Scott,

Some of the heaviest bucks I've taken--all mule deer--weren't weighed for various reasons, such as having to take them apart in the field to get the pieces on a packhorse. But they were definitely bigger than the Montana buck I mentioned in an earlier post that went 232 field-dressed, after a week of hanging.

I killed a bigger Montana buck in 1992 on a horse-pack hunt, but when I can't weigh deer I measure them in various ways, including overall body length and depth of chest. That buck's body was just about exactly the same size as that of a young cow elk (not a calf) my wife killed a couple weeks later, so was probably 350-400 on the hoof. Like the 232-pound-dressed buck, he was high-country buck, and altitude tends to result in bigger bodies.

But as you mentioned so does latitude--"up north"--and some of the biggest bucks both Eileen and I have killed have been Alberta prairie bucks. Didn't get chance to weigh any of them, but the biggest I've taken resulted in 130 pounds of boned meat--and another general rule is that the weight of boned meat is about 1/3 of live weight. Eileen killed a buck not quite as big-bodied on the same hunt.

That's as big as they come in Wisco.
What a horse!

Yep. We used to hunt national forest near Butternut, WI. The feed mill was the registration station at the time and would always weigh your buck for you if you were in the contest.

We happen to be there registering a few deer one morning when a guy brought it a high 140's scoring 10pt with a massive body. The buck weighed 195# on their scale. Dude wouldn't accept it. He was downright livid! "No way that's not 200 pounds!"

Guy was pissed. It was sad and comical at the same time. It was an absolutely beautiful buck and he was pissed it wasn't breaking the magical 200# mark.

Biggest where I hunt was 199.8 lbs field dressed. Just would not go 200. Drat!!! Biggest doe field dressed 123. For just North of the Alabama line, that is pretty good!

Like most things - big is big and you know when you see it.

Yeah, it's pretty rare for a dressed buck to be 200 lbs here in the N AL/NW GA/SE TN tri state area.

My family has owned two deer camps. The first one built in 1926 in Northern Wisconsin, second one built in 1979 in Southern Wisconsin. No weight records were kept until after World II. I text messaged my Great Uncle who has kept the field dressed weights of deer for the biggest.

1945 - 1978

Buck 281 lbs.
Doe 179 lbs.

1979 to present

Buck 268 lbs.
Doe 177 lbs.

Big is Big and you know it when you see it. Yep.
Must have been 1977, I borrowed my brother's 4x4 dodge to get down to a feeder canyon off into Monument Canyon in SW Colorado. I had wanting to hunt there and Mom and my brother were going to church. I had a little Australian shepherd that went everywhere with me, today as a hunting pard, and drove around the beanfields to get to where the sage started. It was right after daylight and I could see deer leaving the fields and towards the canyon. I parked the truck, waited a bit, and got on the biggest set of tracks, wide and deep in the red dirt so I knew it was a big buck. Followed it through the sage without much problem to the canyon's edge where it went down a steep chute in the rimrock. I was standing on the rim when the buck jumped from his bed in the cedars below me and on his second jump over a big dead log where he ran into my bullet from the old 760 '06. His trajectory over the log was obscured except for the narrow window I shot him in so I could not see him fall. I did not hear him running though nor did he appear on the other side of the canyon, so I was hopeful. I told the dog, "go get 'em" and down the chute she went. I heard her running to the log and heard her stop and start panting. I knew we had a deer. He was a Huge 4x4 and was hog fat. I was young and stout but field dressing him was a chore to roll him over. I tried to drag him but could only move him a few feet on the dry ground and sage. The weather was too warm so I drug one end at a time under the shade of the tree he had fallen by and headed for town to get my brother. I was in the parking lot when church was over and we all ran home to get out of the church clothes. Mom came with us and we went back to get the buck. My brother and I tried dragging and it was not going well. We were making progress but it was slow. Mom said, "Cut his head off and I'll drag that." We did that and 400 yards through the sage back to the truck was all we wanted. Mom as normal just did her part without complaint. It was too hot to hang in the meat tree at home so we took him to town where the local grocer had a meat locker. The butcher commented that it was the biggest buck he had hung in 30 years. Didn't weigh him. Didn't even think about it as it wasn't something we did. Tossed the head out for the dog to chew on and then after a while threw the rack under the fuel tank. Later the next year, took it to a local kid and had him put the horns on a board in Wood shop class. They are hanging on my cousin's wall in upstate NY. Good memory.
Best regards,
F01

The only part of this whitetail I could manage to get into my truck was his nose on the tailgate of my truck.

I had to find a culvert lower my tailgate down into the culvert, so it was level with the ground and drag him in, almost hate a heart attack the over way, he was well over 300 lbs.

At deer camp, conversations come up about horns and deer weight and a few years ago we ordered the Pennsylvania Game Commission DEER WEIGHT TAPE. You take a heart girth measurement and it gives you approximate live and field dressed weight plus edible lean meat.

I and others have weighed deer subsequently and it proves to be fairly close.

roundoak;
Good almost evening here so definitely evening there, I hope the day went well overall for you.

Thanks for that information, it's something I'm going to have to look into.

For sure a scale in the shop, much like a chronograph down at the range, certainly changed a few participant's tunes over the years.

The tape looks really handy though.

Thanks again, all the best and good luck on your hunts.

Dwayne

Thats a HOG!

You gotta love Canada "A" LOL

Hey, Dwayne, good day overall here. That weight tape makes for interesting conversation even though it is just an estimate. As I mentioned, deer have been weighed after using the tape it is very close + or -.

Thanks for the good luck, some times one needs it.
Wayne