Wade Lemon Hunting
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Records are made to be broken!
Congrats to our great friend Larry Landgren on harvesting what may be the most amazing mule deer of all times.
This buck shattered multiple records, surpassing the magic 300” with a 262” typical main frame making it the largest frame ever recorded.
Pending SCI Estate World Record for both All-Time Typical, and also Archery.
Thank you to our team and partners at Rancho el Volteadero and @sanjose

SCI?

Looks like a farm raised deer to me!

Holy, it's so enormous it looks fake, AMAZING!

CONGRATULATIONS to the very lucky hunter.

I've never heard of pen raised mule deer.

I say fake!

Body looks really little but I tend to shoot little deer so what do I know.




P

Holy crap

WOW!

It does say pending ESTATE world record, so yeah, it's Farm raised, not free roaming.

When was it shot? The rack and the bow both dwarf the body of the deer. It looks like an old deer but assuming that it’s legit that’s a frigin’ moose of a rack on a fawn sized body.

This.

Those Northern Mexican Ranchos have some the best genes. Betting they supplement feed as well.

Someone got into the candy cigarettes.

Safari Club International.

It is a mule deer but the normal pattern of the forks are different. Still I would be thrilled to get something like it

That’s a buck of many lifetimes.

Mitch Rompalla?????????

Could be the lens, or the guy's arms aren't long enough.

The ear is as wide as his thigh....
But maybe he has chikin legs...

It's a huge deer to be sure but they've also played some camera games. They got the camera up close to the head with a wide angle lens. They got the antlers to just fit in. That lens makes anything back a bit look smaller. That's why the body seems small. If they'd backed off with the camera even 6', it would look entirely different. I would like to see it as it really is. There's no doubt it would still be very impressive.

There's something wrong with this picture.

SCI has a record listing for estate raised animals. Wonder what that guy paid for the deer.
Shows what one can grow with the right genetics, age, and supplements though.

That was my first impression. Still, an impressive buck and I would be stoked to shoot one like that.

The accomplishment in a successful hunt has no relation ta the size of antlers, but only to the disadvantages overcome in making the hunt successful.

I don't understand the idea of looking for YUGE, weird antlers. Going for a Trophy animal is one thing, but I don't consider antlers to be valuable, especially when they are atypical. A good Trophy should have a decent rack, but if it's a skinny buck with a giant, deformed rack that's an odd choice for a Trophy. I thought they usually cull the odd deer to improve herd genetics, IE Eugenics...but I'm a layman when it comes to ranching & hunting. Anyone care to shed some light?

Livestock, not game. I want no part of that stuff.

Somebody’s ALWAYS got to stir the pot! 😏

That’s a monster but SCI is a clue that it was NOT free range. High fence irregardless of the vast acreage it roams allows them (rancher) to supplement their diet with added minerals for antler growth….plus having readily available fresh water year round in an environment where water is scarce also reduces stress and helps to promotes overall health of the animals as well as antler growth.

He’s definitely a beautiful beast…if it was a potential Boone & Crocket or in this case a Pope & Young entry instead of SCI I’d be “jealous”.

That was the arrangement a couple of us had
some years ago on various ranches. Couldn't
shoot the big boys. Spikes, does, and strange
non-typicals only. Hasn't been that way for
years. Many of those same places get a grand
or more for deer we used to shoot for free.
There wasn't all the trophy rack videos and
television shows back then like there is now.
About the same with bird hunting. Most of the
maize fields we used to hunt are now gated
high dollar subdivisions and luxury office
complexes
Oh well. . .

Yep. “Long-armed it”.

There’s a poster on the Fire that does that with every fish picture he posts. 🤪

I don't see the long arming thing going on in the pic, but that doesn't mean there isn't something goofy going on with it. Compared to the bow, it looks to have a coues deer sized body.

It looks to have been in Sonora which kind of makes sense but I would be shocked if that estate deer hadn't been human altered somehow, either through selective breeding, special feed, or whatever else. It may not have basically been an agricultural operation like elk and whitetail sometimes are, but mule deer do exist on estates in the west.

Good on the hunter, but it ain't for me...

I would chit myself if I ever saw a buck like that in the wild.

Some Canadian provinces.
Was that taken in Mexico I wonder.

Yep. He's hiding his thumbs behind the frame. It looks like his thumb and middle fingers could easily encircle the beams.

Yeah, I'm not in it.

Any legal buck can be considered a trophy, but some are more bigger trophies than others, thus more rare, thus more desirable, ....

Not impressed with the hunter or the hunted. 👎

Right on Mike. Then you add Wade Lemon into the mix and no telling what the actual story is. He got caught red handed down there turning out high fence/pen raised deer into a pasture for clients to come shoot, and come off as free range hunts.

LoL, you're right, it's AI, the deer has no thumbs.

maybe dessert mule deer are smaller-bodied than their northern cousins.

Naw man. Look at the eyes. That’s a Chinese deer.

You're killing me, LOL.

Even the jackalope run bigger in Mexico.

Well, I Googled "Rancho el Volteadero"..


A Mexcvan "Resort" with 5,000 Acres under High Fence.


That Mule Deer is just another piece of livestock. Sad.

They generally are, and is why I said that it would make sense if that deer did indeed come from Sonora.

Topped with Sonoran fried ice cream...

Everything else aside, wonder what that deer cost him.??

Plenty.

First thing I noticed was only one bloody arrow left in the quiver. Leads me to believe it was a rodeo and probably a good thing it was fenced in.

Their operation is shooting, not hunting.

I predict 10,000 pages on this thread.

LOL, you guys called it for what it was. Good job.

It's obvious with SCI that it's not free range, I just had never heard of highfence mule deer hunts before.

sci score does not mean high fence......not talking about this deer but in general. sci score is a score, not a reference of where it came from....bob

My guess $12-15000.

Money aside, I just don’t get why a person could feel accomplished for killing a deer or elk that’s been bred and fed to grow gigantic antlers and kept in a small enclosure to be killed like some angus bull.
I’m not in favor of banning it, but whore houses seem like a good comparison. You got what you were after but so what. And no, I’ve not participated in either.

I would guess double...bob

If there is $1 profit to be made, somebody will figure out how to "pen raise" ANYthing!

He could have sat in front of the deer with the bow in his lap and the rack would still be HUGE!

I'll be interested i the rest of the story!

There is a local Mennonite deer farm, and I was there one day trying to buy a scope that the guy had for sale. I asked him if I could see the deer, and he gave me a tour. I wasn't impressed with the size of the bucks, and I told him that I was expecting to see bigger ones. That's when he told me that the big ones had all been sold. I asked him to who, and he said to guys who would turn them out and then shoot them. I asked him if that bothered him, and he said "it's a business."

My youngest has a friend that lives on a "whitetail ranch". A guest pays $10K for a "hunt"!
Last time the kid was there, a guest came in with his "trophy"(?)! The "trophy fee" was an additional $12K. The guest had seen a bigger deer he was thinking about. The "guide" guesstimated the trophy fee for that one would be about $16K!

THEN.....the guy tells the outfitter to reserve 3 spots for next year. He wanted to bring his 2 kids next time.

There was a story going around about Bill Gates when he first made his fortune. If Bill saw a $100 bill on the sidewalk, stopping to pick it up would cost him money!!!!
Some of these "techie" people make SO much money, planning a hunt would actually cost them more than just doling out the cash for a "package" hunt.

Today's society! 🤷‍♂️

Desert mule deer generally live in the low hills, mountains and lowlands of the Southwest. They seldom truly migrate. Rocky Mountain deer tend to be bigger of body with a potential because of larger skeletal systems to produce more massive and larger antlers.

I wonder if the "Hunter" used a GunWerks rifle and took that buck at Long Range? That'd be icing on the cake.

To me the arrow looks like it went through the guts, don’t see any evidence that it went through the chest. Doesn’t really matter dead is dead.

No, not exactly--though desert mule deer do live in lower country. The further north you go in North America, all mammals tend to have larger bodies because they're more resistant to long, cold winters. The same applies to elevation, because winters are longer and colder higher up. I have killed mule deer up to around 400 pounds live weight in Montana and Alberta, both up high and on the Alberta plains. The growing seasons for green vegetation are also longer up north than in hotter climates further south as as in Sonora, where a small body allows deer to dissipate body heat more easily.

Another side-effect is larger ears on Sonoran mule deer, which act as "radiators" The spread of those I've measured on mature bucks was around 26", while the ears on far larger-bodied deer up north is often 21-22".

Around 20 years ago I killed a free-range Sonora buck with a 29-1/2" outside spread, which "grossed" a little over 190 B&C. After weighing a bunch of other mule deer bucks over the years on the accurate freight scale in my garage, I guessed the buck's field-dressed weight at around 160-170 pounds.

It’s an industry that creates jobs. I have no problem with it.

Nice deer.
Congratulations, to this hunter.

Lens trickery. Compare the width of the rack with the hunter’s knees-head distance and the length of the deer’s body.

That’s a really nice buck so they didn’t really need to use a wide angle lens to make it look bigger. By doing that, it gives the naysayers an opening to criticize the hunter, the buck and circumstances of the kill.

High fence deer are about as interesting as pen raised birds.....(ie not interesting at all)

A couple of things about these deer. Jack O'Connor used to hunt them in Sonora, Mexico. I've hunted and studied them for years in Kalifornia. O'Connor pointed out that apparently the local Indians were eating these deer long before the Desert Bighorn showed up in our deserts. Our own studies have found that they live a lot longer than most deer. I've killed two bucks that were over 10, one being 14 yrs. old. Every year when we studied them, a fair number were taken between the ages of 10 to 14, and a few 15-18 yrs. One, was found to be 20.5 yrs.
They get big because they have access to plenty of quality food, and a very low parasite load. My 14 yr. old produced 99 lbs. of cut and wrapped meat. The guy who killed the 20.5 yr. old killed one that produced 140 lbs. of meat.
Antlers ? O'Connor reported a 42 inch buck in his day. I've seen a water hole, night time photo of one that had to be at least 45 inches wide. No "high fence" buck were any of these. BTW, the last I heard, the state bow record for Kalifornia was one of these bucks.
What does all this mean ? They have lots of rough country to hide in and lots of them die of old age. E

I had a disabled (wheelchair) friend from Vancouver, who paid to shoot a very big 425" elk in an enclosure in Saskatchewan and paid lots of money to do that.

I have been hunting elk for years, no way in the world is someone confined to a wheelchair going to kill a wild Elk, in "Fair Chase Conditions".

Fenced animals should never be listed in B&C, P&Y, or SCI IMO.

Sort of like going pheasant hunting and the pheasant are tied to trees lol.

I believe Wade Lemon still has a court date pending?

Agree 100% Mule Deer. I've killed two mature Sonora bucks, and both were about that same body weight. The big whitetails we kill in the TX Panhandle not too far from OK/KS are a little bigger than the Sonora buck I've seen. You can generally take what MartinStrummer says and divide it by 2 and be closer to the actual truth.

It's a good place for all the flush, lardasss lawyer types to go kill stuff and take hero pics just like the numerous whitetail places all over America. They have "preserves" down there for desert bighorns nowadays too. The SCI term "estate" is a direct correlation to the high fence where the hunt takes place. I do like the way SCI scores deer though. No deducts for symmetry like B&C, just a straight up gross score.

Look closely at the mouth, is that rolled corn I see?




P

Absolutely High Fenced...💯‼️

Weird looking muley with a tiny body. This is more typical of antler size to body ratio up here:

I completely agree on the scoring method. I am much more interested in the gross score. It tells me how much bone is on its head.

In case you didn't know, 5,000 is about three miles by three miles.

I seriously doubt most here cover that amount of ground while hunting.

Nice buck. Definitely livestock.

Congrats to the guy on buying a cool looking deer.

If you think that deer had the run of 5,000 acres I have some annuities I'd like to sell you.

I'd be interested in those. Also looking for an Avalanche.

A wild one horned spike is more of a trophy than that or any other high fenced buck.

I would be happy to have his shed antlers from last year.
Jus' for lookin' at.

You have to keep in mind that high fence operations are farms and the deer are farm animals. They breed them for large antlers and sell them. The 'hunters' will pay a premium price for the biggest ones.

It's no different than bulls. There are show ring bulls that win in the ring and then bred to hand chosen cows to improve the genetics. Their calves are kept or sold for more breeding. Then there the range bulls. They're usually still pretty good bulls but a little lower quality and they're turned out with run of the mill cows to produce calves for the market.
Top level bucks are kept for breeding and bred to proven does. They won't be shot unless the price is high enough to justify giving them up. I'm guessing that most deer farms have a few of them hidden away from seeing eyes so they won't be temped by high bids for them. Lower level bucks are sold for shooting. Like range bulls, they can still be very high quality with huge antlers but just not quite good enough to be in the genetic improvement program.

Remember that this buck had a daddy somewhere. I'd like to see him. It's also possible that this one needs to be replaced with fresh genes so he's sold before age starts shrinking antler size.

Bob…. I know what SCI is and I also know that they are the ones that list NON free range animals where P&Y or B&C are strictly free range. Like I said in my post, the fact that it’s listed under SCI and not P&Y tells me that it wasn’t free range as defined by P&Y.

If this was a true free range animal then they’d have it classified under P&Y instead of SCI. SCI is the “catch all” for the animals that CANNOT be classified under B&C or P&Y rules…😉

Have a good day 👍🏼

That sounds like a lot but when it’s surrounded by high fence and strictly managed for deer bought or breed for antler genetics, combined with terrain that’s managed for accessing the deer, long shooting lanes strategically placed all over the land, easy truck access trails, elevated shooting houses, controlled bait and water locations, trail cams monitoring everything and sending real time pics to your phone, deer selectively farmed and fed for antler growth. Three miles by three miles of open desert scrub land that the deer can’t leave isn’t all that big of an area to hunt.

I’m not saying that’s exactly how it was done there but that seems pretty close. It’s SOP for deer and elk “ranches” in this area.

5000 is actually 7.8 sq miles, in whatever configuration its in. So, no, it's not a very big area in open country. A deer might not have any place to hide other than just over the hill. If it's timbered, that's another story entirely.

My buddy is a paraplegic and has killed lot's of big game including a brown bear. He hunts off a quad. It's all been on public ground or ranches (not high fenced). Now I'm not sure if that's considered fair chase, but he does it.

Jimdandy there

I hunted pigs on a 4,000 acre "ranch" and every animal there was free range for the whole thing. I had to hunt for them.

How a man spends his money is no business of mine, but the whole concept of trophies and pay for, even marginally, captive animals...it just doesn't sit right with me or the way I prefer to hunt.
I'd much more likely to be pards with the guys that contributed to that thread on here a while back...the one where the guys recounted their hardship hunts. It's about respect...for self...for the hunt tradition...for the quarry.

I hunted sheep in the wilderness of Alaska, had to hike in 15 miles to get to the spot.

So what.

I telling you guys it’s Mitch Rampalla !!!!

These people are nuts.

JG,

Here are the photos of the two largest-antlered Sonora bucks my buddies and I took in 2004. It's quite apparent that the bodies are relatively small, especially compared to bucks farther north--but they have big ears! My buck, as mentioned earlier, had a 29-1/2" outside spread. The other buck (held by Oswaldo Arrizon, the younger brother of the outfitter, who I believe is now the outfitter) had a 31" spread.

John............for big Sonoran bucks, yours &, especially your buddy's are more typically formed than many I've seen. Many are pretty badly crab-clawed.

Many larger heads from there tend to be more like the one in the OP than typical, &I really don't like their looks.

The pic in the OP is BIG, no matter how it was taken, but IMHO, it's not an attractive head compared to most of the larger heads from further North.

Here are what good looking Mule Deer should look like.

All these are from some areas in SE Idaho where we hunted for a long time before things there went to hell.

The 1st pic is the current Idaho all time #2. The bottom pic is me with a thinner, but wide racked deer that made 177. The middle pic is of a couple of really big, heavy deer.

MM

I've dreamed about a 30" Mule Deer for years.

Guess I'll just have to pay to play.

Cool! You don't see too many African-American hunters with trophy bucks!

Duh! It’s black history month!!!!!!

I have no issues hunting from vehicles or in fenced-off areas, my only point was that where I hunt elk in the Rocky Mountains, it is not possible if you are disabled. I ride horses myself.

I also have ZERO issues with high-fenced, shooting of domesticated animals, whatever turns your crank, go for it.

My point was that Fenced Animals should not be listed in any record books unless there is a book for Highest Scores for Fenced in Animals.

Because you can not compare the two, it would be like comparing Apples to Elephants.

Good for your friend, I admire him!

Cheers

43 1/2" 11 points on one side 14 points on the other, Back in the old day's we wouldn't shoot a Mule Deer Buck Smaller Than 40", Hunters don't let them grow up any more. Rio7

There's a lot of truth in that; really heavy rack.

Where is it from?

MM

I don't have any preconceived ideas of what a big mule deer "should look like." Do have a good friend--a little older than I am--who grew up in southeast Idaho, and his first buck made B&C. It didn't look like the bucks you show, but so what? It was tall and relatively narrow--but with very long tines.

They vary from Mexico to Canada, one reason I've hunted them from Mexico to Canada--along with New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. Here's my biggest Montana buck, both in body weight and antlers. Didn't get to weigh him, since this was around 20 miles from the nearest trail-head, on a horseback hunt with my late outfitter friend Richard Jackson, who I used to guide for before he was killed in a horse wreck in his 40s:

Great buck.........interesting with those extra forks on the rear forks. Looks like a sizeable, thick body laying on the ground too.

Rem KS rifle?

MM

I took my best, by far, last year on an 8000 acre low fenced ranch in SW Kansas. Big bodied guy.

Now that's a beautiful buck, Rio, a real shooter.

I like big mule deer no matter where they're from. I've killed them in Sonora, TX, NM, OK, and CO. Oddly enough, the biggest bodied mule deer I've hunted live in the West TX sandhills area. Low deer densities prevail.

Yeah, that boy has a big body alright.

Mule deer are probably one the hardest game animal to hunt for a lot of reasons, & there are not so many deer anymore, to say nothing of big bucks.

A trophy mule deer is a real, usually hard earned, animal.

MM

Thanks! It was a VERY big-bodied buck. Obviously couldn't weigh him, but I tend to measure big game bodies, both in "chest-depth" from brisket to back, and front of the the chest to rear of the rump. He was as big as a 1-1/2-year old cow elk Eileen killed a couple weeks after that. Probably 350-400 live weight.

The "extra" tine was interesting, since it was just about exactly the same length on both antlers. Might also mention the meat tasted great--it was at least two weeks before the rut started.

Not a Remington KS. Instead it was a custom rifle built by the late Dave Gentry on a 700 action, with a synthetic stock I've forgotten the name of--and is no longer made. He lightened the action by not only taking steel off the outside, but by substituting an aluminum tube for the center of the bolt, and you couldn't see it. Also a Gentry Model 70-type safety. The barrel was a #1 stainless Douglas, coated with something Dave used back then, which was very tough.

Hunted with that rifle for around a decade on various hunts in both the U.S. and Canada, among other animals taking one of my two biggest caribou. But a friend finally talked me out of it in a trade....

Amen MM. I've been hooked on hunting them since 1971.

Here's a wide one Cookie ran down last summer/fall. Probably would not score well in B&C.


Rear view


And another good one in the neighborhood.


Like them when the spread gets out well beyond the ears.

Dave Gentry always did top notch work, IMO..................sounds like a great rifle.

MM

Yeah, they're my favorite too.

Biggest bodied deer I've ever seen while hunting was in CO, flattops in Delta county.

Deer had to be 34-36" & 350 lb.; unfortunately, I was elk hunting & couldn't shoot it as at that time, CO had split seasons.

Stood & looked at me for 5 minutes at maybe 100 yards or so.

Just my luck....................

MM

[quote=JGRaider]I like big mule deer no matter where they're from. I've killed them in Sonora, TX, NM, OK, and CO. Oddly enough, the biggest bodied mule deer I've hunted live in the West TX sandhills area. Low deer densities prevail.

[/quote
JG, an area game warden told me there are bucks that would go 400 on the hoof in the country from Seminole south to Imperial.

Only of my Texas big racks came off real big bucks, however.

The 32 or so incher I got with a Muzzle Loader in NM was about as big as a cow elk.

My cousin holds the rack of my, at the time, No 3 Desert Mule Deer and No 1 Texas Mule Deer.

I had a couple of accomplished Co Deer and Elk hunters as patients who have worked on the Chevron Oil Co country in the sandhills north of Imperial who also ranch on the side who have told me of several huge muleys on it over 40 inches.

High fenced isn’t necessarily a canned hunt or even an easy hunt, but something tells me that particular buck wasn’t exactly a challenge. That is totally beside the point though and a discussion for a different day…

Free range big bucks come from all over. I have dozens and dozens of pics on my phone of big mule deer bucks friends have recently killed in most all western states. The buck in the OP is a bit extreme, but good on him if he’s happy with the whole deal, whatever the circumstances.

My biggest bodied buck was from western Wyoming and fairly high elevation. I have no clue what he weighed but sure would like to.

That’s a ridiculous stud of a buck, Jag.

Congrats again.

Thanks, MM and God Bless.

Helluva buck, Doc.

MM

Wow! That's a beautiful muley!

Did I miss something with the roll of tape?

"SCI Estate World Record"

Congrats to the breeder.

I have no idea where that came from. It's not in the photo I put into the Campfire's photo-posting program!

Maybe Rick Bin has a secret "tape app".....

Maybe it means they're "taping" you...

Does breeder and feed mix get listed for estate records?

It should.

More responsible for the record than the shooter!

My god your wife takes awesome pictures.....are those from some sort of digiscope system, or a DSLR zoomed in, or something else?

For what it is worth, here is my biggest bodied mule deer (shown here a few times) from the Wyoming high country. I am guessing a combo of good nutrition and genetics, as well as age allowed him to be what he was. Only 26" wide and nothing ground breaking as far as antlers, but a body Mike Obama would envy...

Thanks Montana Man, you had some brutes too.

Truth. I figure the feed mix is as closely guarded as the Pfizer Jab mix.

T Inman:

Cookie has 3 DSLR's. Little if any cropping, but just slightly trimmed to fit the typical computer screen. The topmost image you linked to was taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark 4 using a Canon 100-400 mm lens zoomed to 270mm. I would have to look up the data on the other images. I was not there, but her story was she was backing off the trail so they could get by, meaning they were close. Probably inside of 50 yds. I was unknowingly about 100+yds somewhere behind and upwind of the pair in the out of sight background, and I suspect they were hustling away from me.

The 100-400mm is her bread-and-butter unit being easily handheld, but she also has a 500mm prime when one needs to stretch out. The DSLR's come with several sizes of sensors. Some are smaller than the full frame 35mm sensor and are often called crop sensors. I.e. they are only capturing the central portion of the image the lens is routing into the camera. I think that camera is a 1.6 crop. Another common size is 1.4.

That being, if one has a 100 m lens, the image captured is the optical equivalent of using a 160mm. If one puts on the 500mm, it's the optical equivalent of an 800mm (i.e 1.6X500). If one gets into photography, the real $$$ go into lenses.

There are some newer less expensive lenses coming out now, but their light gathering abilities are a bit weak, and one finds them wanting early and late in the day. I think one can get some 100-800mm glass now for about $2k, but again they are poor in low light. Very sharp when out in bright daylight though.

Have a good one,

Lol 3 miles? That's nothing.

Another High Fence Deer, I prefer to call them "Canned Hunts", so what! lol

He’s out of range, let me shake this bag of corn feed, he’ll walk right over.





P

EXACTLY!

While they drink beers and puff Mary Jane spliffs 100 yards away from the feeder in a nice warm vehicle or stand, with a laptop streaming Porn Hub videos lol

Canned hunts are not hunting.

At the big buck contests, I see a few 30" bucks, not like it used to be, they all used to be 30"+.

I have never shot one larger than 26", but many of the bucks around here can easily be big bodied and 300lbs with a 20-24" rack.
I think we will see the return of cranker bucks if we have a better management of habitat created by forest fire's, which is most of the local Mule deer Country.

I love hunting Mule deer and shot quite a few like this.
A poor pic.

Beauty! That's a classic BC muley.

I've talked to ranchers in Northern NM who tell me they had a lot of mule deer over 50 years ago and 30 inch bucks were common. Now they say they wouldn't allow a hunt because the deer population is so low and all due to NM Game laws. They say they have almost as many mountain lions as deer and haven't seen a big buck in decades.

When your 50 years of deer management has not produced results and the bastards stick with it there is a skunk in the works.

Mule Deer;
Good evening John, I hope that you and Eileen had a well behaved weekend and you're both healthy, warm and dry tonight.

We're supposed to be getting a bit of a dump onto the passes tonight - up to 40cm they say - but we can use the snow so we'll take it.

Thanks for putting up that photo again, every time I see it I just shake my head as it's one of the bigger bodied mulies I've ever laid eyes on.

For sure our experience is only with southern BC mulies which aren't typically that big and I've only handled about a hundred of them over the years give or take, so not as many as some by a long shot but perhaps enough to recognize an outsized specimen.

A buddy killed one that had to be close to 200lb into the cooler, but we boned it all out except the two hind legs.

This one went 145lb boned out on the mountain with the back and front leg bones in that number, but we boned the rest out in the bottom of the shin tangle pucker brush canyon it ran down into before I ended it.



The photo was the 2nd trip down there that day and it was a cluster of epic proportions, thus my eyeballs looking like two pee holes in the snow....

If I was to guess, I'd think it was 185lb carcass.

I've killed one more that was likely within 10lb of it, but the truly big ones like yours is we've just not seen here, in nearly 40 years of chasing them.

Thanks again for the photo John, that one always makes me grin and I never tire of seeing it.

All the best to you and Eileen as we hopefully head into spring.

Dwayne

Other biological factors in the size of mule deer (including antlers) is that during the Great Depression there were plenty of drought years, along with plenty of subsistence poaching. Consequently the numbers of mule deer were at a low point--until WWII, when a lot of hunters were otherwise occupied.

After the war the general climate in the West was wetter, and mule deer populations increased due to more browse. They also reproduce quicker than elk, does generally having two young, versus one calf per elk. This is partly why mule deer populations rose rapidly after the war. But even after soldier/hunters returned, there weren't nearly as many as there are today. As a result, bucks had more good feed--and less hunting pressure. Thus they grew bigger, and older. In fact, some states (such as Colorado) allowed hunters two bucks a year.

Eventually elk populations started rising--and it's been demonstrated more than once in various studies that larger elk populations tend to result in fewer mule deer. And elk populations continue to increase in much of the West, partly due to more of 'em spending more time on private land, where hunting pressure is lower.

All of which is why so many huge-antlered mule deer were killed in the 1960s era--and fewer 30" bucks (or however you want to measure antlers) are taken these days on public land, or even private.

Thanks!

Thanks John,

Years ago, '99 or so, I went to a conference here in NorCal. F&G guys showed some interesting pictures of the local landscapes and the changes in the mosaic pattern of forest/brush/open areas. Folks were wondering what had happened to all the nice big dear they used to shoot.

Open and brushy areas were more prevalent back in the pre and post War years do to forestry practices and large fires that weren't controlled early like they are now. What were once mixed plant communities had turned into large sections of second growth forest and really thick brush with fewer open areas for forbs and other feed to grow. Great cover areas, but little for inducing growth of herds or antlers.

Unfortunately, the conditions here have led to some rather large wildfires in the past decade or two. I imagine the openings caused by them will help some with the deer populations............assuming the unhunted lions and the invading wolves don't keep numbers down.

John

My grand father told me as a teenager herding cattle at their ranch near Austin Nevada around 1900, he and his brother saw a Mule Deer doe. They didn't know what it was so a whip and spur pursuit was under taken, to no avail. They never saw another Mule Deer for several years. This was near the Table Mountain, an area famous for big Mule Deer in the 1960's, and is now a wilderness area. In the 1950's and 1960's the Mule Deer .population had exploded. In the 1960's when I started hunting deer it was not unusual to see 200 or 300 deer in a day. While hunting in northern Nevada we would glass 25 or 30 quality bucks every morning while archery hunting. Five years ago I hunted this same area for a week and saw one fork horn buck. In the 1980's the Mule Deer Population declined at an alarming rate. We draw for tags on Nevada, no OTC tags, and one is lucky to draw a tag every 4 or 5 years. I can't really say what caused this decline. Predators, hunting pressure, habitat, or just general decline of Mule Deer though out the West. In the 1960's hunters Nevada harvested over 30,00 deer every year. Now the total harvest is under 4000 per year, which my be part of the problem. The Nevada Dept of Wildlife has no idea how many Mountain Lion we have and coyote, which were a topic of conversation if one was seen, when dinner came around at the ranch are now a daily pack sightings are seen daily.

You were hunting a hell of a ranch and Felizardo is a great guy. Still in business and still killing big deer. I'm assuming you were hunting the family place and not one of the leases

Yep, the family place.

I'd seen another buck with antlers just about the same size as the one I got maybe half an hour before, but didn't get a shot at him....

Back to the subject/deer in the OP, is it just me or do some of these big muleys with their antler structure almost resemble whitetails as much or more than they do "classic" mule deer? I guess I am talking about the lengths of the two beams at the first fork. I get the typical/non-typical distinction. I am not considering ear, coat, and tail distinctions... I would definitely call it a MD based on those morphological distinctions.

I know MD can and do "hybridize" where the ranges overlap but still not as often as one might think. Obviously whitetails/Coues in Mexico where this was taken. Is that what I am seeing in these particular antlers?

Beautiful, impressive regardless.

Thought you might like to see this group photo:

Nice!