I got a forward from a friend and the email claims this Nebraska buck weighed 412 lbs.

Call me skeptical, but as husky as this buck is, I doubt he or any other wild whitetail would break the 400 lb. mark.

Anyone out there got any valid info on this brute?

Another picture.

Another look.

Sorry, but I couldn't figure out how to put all the photos in one post.

No real way to tell with the way they took those pictures.

The last picture really shows that he is quite a hog. 400 lbs. seems unlikely, though.

That is a big deer. 412 pounds seems a bit heavy, but believable.

Definitely the largest (body size) deer I have ever seen!!

Huntr

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.

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.

Jeff

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="" />

John

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.

Jeff

WOW!!!! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />
Don

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.

Jeff

Strangely enough, I got the exact same pictures by e-mail, which claimed it was shot in Minnesota.

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.

Jeff

I remember that article and that was one hog of a deer!! FWIW - I think most people misjudge the live and dressed weight of their deer (and fish). IMO its kind of like the "500 yard shot".

They have a picture of that buck on B&C site and who took him and score 148 with a bow.

I emailed the B&C information to Larry Porter. He is going to check with the Game & Park's Deer Specialist, Kit Hams, to see if he can confirm this deer.

Jeff

bull hockey.
hogzilla: 250 pounds lighter than claimed.
deerzilla? 50-100 pounds lighter than 412.

I have a hard back book printed 1991 by The Hunting & Fishing Library titled WHITE-TAILED DEER. Under the chapter Trophy Hunting on page 122; is a picture of a 461-pound buck, shot in 1955, that was the largest deer every taken in Maine. In the picture, this deer is hoisted by the antlers into the rafters of a building w/ it's two rear hooves touching the ground. The hunter is standing next to this deer and the top of his head only reaches the deers brisquet. One very big deer in size and weght!

Gary

IIRC, the guy who shot that deer was an older man and he used a Winchester 71 in 348.

Jeff

A buddy of mine shot a whitetail in Colorado that was to large for us to load into his pickup alone so we had to go get his fathers pickup with a hoist. As far as the wieght I have no idea but I would guess well into the 300lb range it was huge.

Here is what Larry Porter has to say about this deer:

"I did read a story about the deer written by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune outdoor writer. The guy who shot the deer is from Arkansas. But the deer was never weighed. The weight was estimated at 412 pounds by using the measurements of the carcass. As a result, I have a problem with the estimated weight. The deer was shot with an arrow and the carcass was found the following day. The guy said the carcass was bloating. If the weight was estimated by using calculations from a bloated carcass, that skews the estimation process.
Perhaps the deer's body was huge. From the picture, I can't deny that. But to assign a weight of 412 pounds from such an estimation process is a bit over the top. It certainly isn't precise, and the deer's weight would never be certified as being the absolute weight by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission.".

Jeff

Just on the subject of 400-lb. deer...
I have a trivia quiz written by Charles Alsheimer, taken from "Whitetail Wisdom", a North American Hunting Club book. According to this book, the largest known whitetail in North America was taken by bowhunter John Annett of Ontario, Canada in 1977, and weighed 431 lbs, field dressed, on government cerified scales. I've never run across another reference to this deer, but what a whopper!

That critter's momma must've been a Moose <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

HBB

FWIW:

I vote thyroid problem. ANyone who wathces professional wrestling will remmeber Andre the Giant. He is a living example of a Thyroid Giant.

Such things can happen in the wild too.

Thanx to 260Remguy for looking up all of the data.

BMT

That is one big deer no matter how much he weighs. In Maine on a good year, we'll get at least one deer that has a field-dressed weight of around 300 pounds, and two or three that are over 290 pounds. "The live weight of such deer would be in excess of 360 pounds, and that's a heck of a big buck."

So with that said it probably is possible. Good genetics, good feed and years to grow might produce such a trophy !

wow, a big deer here is 200 pounds. a 300 pounder would be unheard of. I call bs that theres a 400+ pounder in Neb.

I don't know about the others, but this photo is fake. Notice the black shadow that goes down along the side of the neck by the guy's leg. It's a poor photoshop job. They're also playing games with a wide angle lense. Note the oversized head compared to the rump. A wide angle lense at very close range causes distortions like that.

Dick