Category: Photo Gallery & Stories

Big Louisiana Buck Down, No License

Get this: A deer hunter shot a monster, 200+ inch buck without a deer hunting license. Now, we’ve all made mistakes while out hunting, but this bowhunter in Louisiana simply takes the cake — a big, fat, huge cake with tree trunks coming out of its skull! This indiscretion more than likely falls under “bad decision” rather than a mere mistake.

This white-tailed deer-hunt-gone-wrong turned out not to be straight-up deer poaching, but the fact that the successful hunter called up a state wildlife agent to score the big buck, well, that was just another dumb move on his part. Of course, that’s kind of the way it works with criminals that eventually get caught, they just don’t know when to stop.

LA Wildlife at Work

Source: Officials say Senior Agent Douglas Anderson received a call at 10 a.m. Saturday about a trophy buck that had been shot on a private lease in Avoyelles Parish near Simmesport by a guest hunter. The club wanted someone to come measure the giant buck for record keeping purposes. Upon arrival, Anderson was informed that the big deer may have been shot by an unlicensed hunter.

He says he interviewed the hunter, Glen Toups Jr., 40, and Toups confessed to not having a basic hunting license, big-game license or deer tags. The agent cited Toups for the violations, and seized the record-worthy deer, which was unofficially scored as a 208-inch buck.

Taken by a licensed deer hunter, it would have qualified as one of the largest bow kills ever in Louisiana.

The state’s largest non-typical archery buck was a 219 1/8-inch deer taken by Billy Husted in Tensas Parish in 2007. The No. 2 deer was Rodney Lee’s 203 5/8-incher taken in East Feliciana parish in 1983.

Mature Buck Fooled, Not Game Warden

A mature white-tailed buck is a smart animal. Apparently, the Louisiana hunter was able to fool the old buck, but couldn’t get one past the LA wildlife department. It takes good deer habitat and a deer with a freakish genes to put 200 inches of bone on a free-ranging buck. It happens every year, but not on very many bucks. That’s a truly impressive animal.

Unfortunately, since the buck was shot illegally, he will not get his proper due in the Louisiana state rankings. The poacher not only took the buck, but also stole the opportunity for one of his fellow hunters to legally harvest it. Wonder if he’s still in that hunt club?

No Luck, Fake Buck

A would-be big buck and state record turns out to be a total hoax. North Carolina deer hunter poacher Nick Davis even fooled an official scorer, but the disproportionately-large antlers did not trick the whitetail hunting community. Continued pressure from deer hunters finally spurred action within the state’s wildlife agency.

Davis recanted after investigation by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (NCWRC).

The deer was reported to have been shot last Wednesday by the Surry County deer hunter and was measured by Joey Thompson, who happens to be an official scorer for the North Carolina Bowhunters Association. He put the big whitetail buck at a gross score of 223 1/8 inches, a net score of 208 2/8 inches.

Too Good to be True

The buck looked good. Too good. The remarkably white antlers were almost flawless. Hunters continued to point out the pristine rack and commented that the antlers were too white. The inquisitions prompted the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (NCWRC) to take a closer look.

Wildlife officials eventually determined that the antlers were not from North Carolina, but apparently the small-bodied buck was. Based on casual observation, my first thought was that the buck has genes from a northern subspecies of whitetail. It takes a big-bodied buck with a large skeletal system to grow antlers of that size.

North Carolina, or Pennsylvania?

Apparently, the antlers were from a Pennsylvania buck that had been screwed onto the skull plate of a recently taken 3 point buck. As it turns out, the young buck was poached using a rifle. Ouch. Davis finally confessed to wardens that the oversize antlers were from another state.

READ: Yes, A Mountain Lion Killed This Buck

Davis almost pulled the switcheroo off, but some skeptical hunters turned out to be right. That’s not always the case. Davis hoped his giant, fake buck from North Carolina would get him a little attention from the deer hunting community. As it turns out, Davis got way more publicity than he ever wanted.

Big Buck Down in Kansas

Still waiting to catch a big nontypical buck in one of your game camera photos? Me, too. Seeing a big buck in one of my camera photos always gets me pumped up, but nothing beats seeing that deer in real life. And putting a tag on him is the best. We aren’t yet up an running in Texas, but in many states the white-tailed deer hunting season is already open!

And some hunters are making the most of an open season. Sixteen-year-old Clayton Brummer tagged this half-velvet nontypical in Stafford County, Kansas, on September 8 during the state’s youth season. After an encounter with the big buck earlier in the season, Brummer got a second chance while sitting on stand with his father near the confluence of two cultivated fields.

A few hours before dusk, the 21 point nontypical buck appeared in the milo field they were watching and trotted down the rows before disappearing into a large cornfield. While sitting on pins and needles, the giant buck emerged from the corn at 30 yards with tattered velvet still adorning his nontypical antlers.

With years of whitetail hunting experience already under his belt, the teen wasted no time in making his shot count. The buck dropped. I can only imagine the look on his face after the shot. I bet that smile got even wider as he approached the giant buck.

Hunting a Nontypical

Source: Brummer said it was still several hours before dark when they watched the buck rise from the milo, running down the rows shaking its head as it tried to avoid insects as it headed in to the large field of unharvested corn.

“All we could do was sit, wait and watch,” said Brummer. “We knew he was in the corn and that he’d probably have to come out sometime.”

He said he was surprised when the buck stepped out at about 30 yards and there wasn’t even time to alert his father, who was looking through binoculars at other parts of the field.

“It all just kind of runs in the family,” he said. “My dad and I try to get older deer and let some of the younger deer grow. We do take some management bucks.” That’s normally a term given to a buck with inferior antlers that trophy hunters don’t want to breed and pass along such genetics.

The Brummers live and hunt in Stafford County, one of America’s best-known trophy whitetail areas largely because of outfitted hunts featured on outdoors television. Such attention can make finding places to hunt difficult for middle-class residents. Brummer said he is blessed, and thankful, to know a few landowners who avoid offers of leasing so they can share deer hunting ground with their friends.

Deer Hunting in Kansas

Kansas is well known for producing quality whitetail bucks year after year. Not all of them are 21 points and of the proportions of the one shot by Brummer, but the state generally has some very healthy deer. That quality may be under pressure as deer populations in some parts of the state continue to rise. When it comes to free-ranging whitetail, having quality and quantity is a balancing act.

READ: Giant North Carolina Buck is a Fake

Having too many deer puts pressure of the food supply, and that results in smaller deer. Too few deer and hunting opportunities become slim. It’s the same on any ranch, farm or forest land. If you have or lease property for hunting, consider managing the local deer herd to meet you goals. Otherwise, Kansas is always an option!

Contraception for Deer Management

Much of what we discuss on this site concerns managing white-tailed deer populations for optimal health, which leads to increased fawn survival and improve antler growth. That’s great for hunters and sustainable, rural deer herds, but people living in suburban areas that chock-full with overabundant deer have a completely different perspective when it comes to whitetail management—and the number one objective there is to decrease the deer population.

It’s interesting that deer herd reduction is the common prescription for two goals that are just about 180 degrees from one another; managers are aiming to produce more and healthier deer while deer management in developed areas is strictly about reducing deer numbers, deer reproduction.

Deer Birth Control?

A lot of the people that live in suburbs are a bit different than the folks that live out in the country. I understand that plenty of deer hunters find themselves living in the ‘burbs, but it’s important to realize that only about 5 percent of the US population actually hunts. That means the overwhelming majority of Americans, which could be you or the bulk of your neighbors, do not. Nothing wrong with that (because there is already a lot of competition for hunting lands), but since we are in America everyone gets to have their say, right or wrong. Case in point: Birth control for a free-ranging deer herd.

Source: “My decision to pursue this is ultimately a practical one. If it works, we will finally have accomplished what other communities have failed to do and found a non-lethal approach to the deer issue that would work in a dense village like ours,” Swiderski said.

Swiderski said the five-year study, which also involves the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University in North Grafton, Mass., will cost the village about $10,000 this year and possibly less next year.

Researchers hope to treat 60 deer this year and during the next two winters, and to continue to monitor them. Captured does — tranquilized first with a drug-filled dart — will have a numbered ear tag attached, blood drawn for a pregnancy test and an initial vaccine dose. Known as PZP, the vaccine uses a doe’s immune system to stop her eggs from being fertilized.

But after about a week of looking for deer, Naugle and Grams had tagged and treated just one. They can fire at deer no more than 20 yards away with their air-powered rifles, and they are still learning where the animals spend their days.

“It’s a slow process. But next year, by the time we come back here, we’ll have everything figured out,” Naugle said.

Contraception for Free-Ranging Deer

To get to the point, contraception does not work on free-ranging white-tailed deer herds. It barely works on captive deer herds because of either the inability to get an appropriate dose of birth control to the deer on a daily basis or because enough of the deer can not be “treated” within a short enough period of time (i.e. more females are added annually). In this case, I’m going to have to claim insanity for this town because the most telling words in the entire article were these, “If it works, we will finally have accomplished what other communities have failed to do…”

It’s a shame to throw away good money. If anyone who reads this lives in an area with overabundant deer, whether you are a community leader looking to control the deer population or now simply an informed citizen, stand up and let your neighbors know that contraception for deer does not work unless you are willing to build a deer-retardant fence that is at least 8-feet tall around the problem area, then drastically reduce the population through either deer hunting or trapping, and then maybe there is at least a chance that some type of birth control can work.

If all of that is not an option, then the most cost-effective way to control suburban deer populations is through regulated hunting. Unless you have unlimited resources, hunters are your only hope. Be nice to them.