Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Best state or province to shoot a 300 pound whitetail?

I did not intend to pee in your cheerios, but after rereading my post I can understand why it came across that way. Just never thought of weight of a whitetail being a goal.

As far as Shockeys outfitting goes, I always see a fresh bale of alfalfa in front of his stands on the TV shows. Is this a common practice?

TomA - I see you're a TX fellow, if you hunted in the northeast, you'd know that IS how they count. For years and years I would hear guys talk about a 6, 8, 10 point, but when asked how big a deer was, you always heard "X lbs". Just differences in hunting culture from area to area I suppose.

Personally, when someone asks me about my biggest deer, I tell them about the 197lb dressed deer I shot in Northern NH. (BTW, it was a 7pt.) One of my brothers shot one at 201lbs dressed a couple years ago (8pt) in the same area.

And although I never killed one up there, when I hunted in northern Maine, I saw a couple real bruisers that would have put my 197lb deer to shame, just never could get it done up there.

To the OP, Norther Maine, NH, VT, Adirondacks of NY all hold some big bodied deer and aren't quite so far to travel and all have lots of publicly hunt-able land. I don't want to pay someone to go sit in a blind for a week...I'll take a DIY hunt where I gotta go find a deer and come home empty if I don't, given the choice.

I've never heard of a 300 pounder in Arkansas.

Minnesota, according to the DNR, has broke the 500 pound mark at least once.

Avg female weight is 145 pounds, males 170 pounds.

http://news.dnr.state.mn.us/2013/11/04/minnesota-deer-facts-3/

You guys have convinced me to take a closer look at Maine, I'm going to have to do a little more research on that and the ADK.

Funny, I live in northern Maine and they are convincing me to look hard at Minnesota. I guess the grass is always greener...

All of my rabid deer hunting forester buddies now spend a lot of time in Ontario.

The biggest deer I have shot was well over 200 pounds dressed and had a pretty dinky rack.

It's an interesting experience when you start weighing the boned-out meat to make sausage and realize that you have a good 20-30% more meat by weight than a usual "big" deer that you've processed.

I mean interesting in a good way.

We have them here in WNY I've killed one here a couple years ago and one in Saskatchewan

NY deer and picture of scale with dressed deer




Saskatchewan deer




My buddy shot this one 35 minutes from my house this season
well over 300lbs

field dress weight x 1.28= Live weight

This was another slob I shot here actually same stand as the one picture above but I never weight it

Some amazing bucks you have there dude! That dagger on your buddies is crazy!

He just sent me some live pictures of the deer a guy sent him today,guy lives 2 miles from my buddy and found out he killed it and got him pictures he had taken in late summer...check out the other deer that was with him!

Speaking of hunting in Alberta, not sure if you guys are aware of this but if you have friends or family here, they can act as a hunter host, and act as your guide. You can only do it once every three years, but might be a good option for some. Cheaper than paying an outfitter, if you know someone who hunts and knows his area. We can't take payment for it either, so bonus for you! I've done it a couple times.

I have killed two bucks over 300 live weight, and oddly both came from NW Minnesota. I see a lot more really big deer in EC Minnesota than I ever did up there. In November I killed a doe that would go over 200 dressed. Another doe I killed weighed out at 70 lbs boned trimmed meat. I shot a fawn a couple weeks later that was bigger than that doe. I think it belonged to the big doe.

Where I hunt, there's a fair number of really big deer. I shot another big doe about 8 years ago and two years ago I was watching a doe with two fawns trying to decide which fawn was going in the freezer when a doe half again bigger walked out. A doe with 2 fawns will almost always be at least 3/4 or older. A mature doe like that is pretty typically 150 lbs.

Man that's quite the gene pool you guys have around you! You guys find most of your bucks during archery season?

Not always but archery season is rut time here

dvd/roundoak: Thanks.

Nice big bucks!

A lot of northern states have "big buck" contests based on weight, not antler size.

I'll use northern MN for an example because thats where I have the most experience. You can shoot a 5.5yo deer with a 110" rack but he'll dress out at 190-250#. That said, you can also shoot a 3.5 to 6 or 7 or 8.5 yo old buck with a 190" rack that dresses that same. NE MN has some moster deer in body weight. Typically, they'll be beautiful 8 or 10 bucks that don't see a lot of people.

If you've never seen one from up there, I think you'd be shocked on how big the body really is. They get realy long. As in 6' or more in length.

I was equally shocked when my FIL shot a WI 10pt the first year I hunted there, and it dressed out at 138#. It was short and skinny with a beautiful rack. Come to think of it....I like women that way too.

I think I'd like to hunt Ontario. I can see myself doing that in the future.

I've shot two that were over 200 dressed. The first one was in 2002, 8pt 138" buck that dressed at 227#. That was horse like. I had to drag it out of a nasty spruce bog for a few hundred yards just to get at it with some help. He was aged by the DNR at the registration station as 4.5yo

The other was 2012. An 8p buck that dressed at 204#. His rack was small, probaly 90-100," 15" wide. Also came out some nasty stuff, tag alder/cedar swamp. (see a theme here)