I will bet that this deer is at least semi-farm raised. And prolly fed some steroid food. Maybe a farmed food plot in that hollow with some crazy mixture. The biggest whitetail in the wild can't get that fat.....period. life is just too hard for em.
They can get very large here but I'm almost positive that's a bogus pic and not from Nebraska. I've never seen a deer that would crack the 300 lb. mark, and most wouldn't even crack 200 lbs.
Biden's most truthful quote ever came during his first press conference, 03/25/21. Drum roll please...... "I don't know, to be clear." and THAT is one promise he's kept!!!
I saw a pic of this a few weeks ago and that pic said "309 lb's" Saw another pic of the same deer and it said the buck may have had a "thyroid problem" if you can belive that one! I'm going to add my own internet BS and say Prob one of those high fence hunts ware they have the deer all jacked up on testosterone <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> there is always photo shop...
There are whitetails that big in NE. A few years ago, the Omaha World-Herald newspaper had pictures of a 400+ lbs. whitetail buck that had been arrowed around Fort Calhoun, NE, just north of Omaha. The hunter, and his friends, hauled it out and weighed it, field dressed, on a certified scale. Remember that deer in the eastern half of NE eat a lot of waste grain, beans/corn/milo, the same grain that cattle are fed when they are in feedlots being fattened for market. IIRC, the buck had a small rack, but a huge body. There are plenty of places around Omaha where deer are born, live, and died from old age, if they avoid getting hit by a car. There is currently a big buck with a nice set of drop-tine antler on the Boys Town property that looks to be well over 200 lbs. If he stays in his core area, where no hunting is allow, he will probably be safe among the suburban sprawl on the West side of Omaha. Even the average deer killed in Eastern NE, particularly the does killed during the January doe season, carry a lot of fat and actually have some fat marbling in their meat. Tender and flavorful!
The biggest deer that I have ever seen was in rural Cass County, near the village of Union, NE, about 30 miles South of Omaha. This deer was so big that when I 1st saw him, I thought that I was looking at a Jersey cow that was running loose.
Edit: The biggest deer that I have shot in NE weighed almost 300 lbs., field dressed. It was a whitetail with 3 antlers and no testicles, so it is likely to have had a serious hormone imbalance. I shot it along the West Fork of the Big Blue River in northern Fillmore County, about 50 miles SW of Lincoln, NE, in 1999.
Jeepers, that is one big deer! If they'd have claimed three and a quarter or so, I'd believe it. But 412? As someone already posted, "no real way to tell..."
Twenty years or so ago when I lived in northern CO I did hear about a se WY whitetail buck that topped the four hundred mark. Never saw it or a picture of it though, just stories. Who knows.
Still, that there's the biggest whitetail this old mule skinner has ever laid eyes upon.
I'm a biologist and I have weighed 12 whitetail deer from southern Ontario farmland areas that exceeded 300lb live weight (using known-accurate scales and converting from gutted mass to live mass using a conversion accepted by the scientific community). I don't recall the heaviest one however.
Having said that, I think that is a damn odd deer! The pictures clearly add some perspective distortion that does not help, but my feeling is that this is not a deer that had to make its living in the wild (including farm country in this definition).
I wonder if he has had some steroid help or at least been fed in some kind of captive situation.
My opinion -- worth twice what you paid for it! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
The winters in NE are quite a bit milder than in ON. Combine that with the easy availability of high quality food and an area where hunting is often restricted by land owners who move out from the suburbs and don't want "their" deer shot. With the right genetics, the opportunity for deer to live long and grow big is easy to see. I don't believe that it would be legal to have captive deer in NE and I don't know of any high fence hunting operations in NE, but I do know that there is a documented whitetail weighing over 400 lbs. in NE within the past 15 years. I'll email the guy who writes the outdoors section in the Sunday World-Herald and ask him to go back through his records or maybe he could post here and comment on this deer.
The deer is no doubt a mammoth but 412 lbs???? I live in New England and hunt in Maine where I have seen some huge deer taken, the largest one being a dressed weight of 255 lbs. To say this deer is another 150 lbs over that sounds like a fishing story. It is tough to tell in the photos but with the way people are growing racks now, anything is possible
No harsh winters, thousands of square miles of fields full of waste grain that didn't make it into the combine, and limited hunting pressure provides a deer with the right genetic mix an environment that would support him growing that big.
I got a response to my email from Larry Porter, the outdoor reporter for the Omaha World-Herald. He has not heard of a 412 lbs. deer being killing in NE. He does remember the deer that he wrote about some years ago, but his recollection is that it weighed in a little over 350 lbs., not a little over 400 lbs. Lighter than I had thought, but still a heck of a big deer wherever deer are found.
