East Tennessee Outdoors… World record whitetail deer

Published 12:13 am Saturday, November 30, 2019

BY DANNY BLEVINS

STAR CORRESPONDENT

Stephen Tucker knew he had just killed a special deer. Tucker, who is a resident of Sumner County, Tennessee, was hunting that November 7, 2016, on land he and his family had leased and hunted for 40 years when a monster whitetail walked out of the woods.

When the smoke cleared, a world record buck lay in Tucker’s field, and one man’s life was changed forever.

Tucker had just killed a world record non-typical whitetail deer. This wasn’t a once in a lifetime deer – it was a once in 100 lifetimes deer.

The deer had a total of 47 nontypical points on it and weighed just over 150 pounds.

To explain, any deer that has the exact match of antlers on each side of his head is considered to have a typical set of antlers. Any deer whose antlers do not match each side of his head is considered to have a nontypical set of antlers.

After a required waiting period that allowed the antlers to dry, Tucker took the deer to the TWRA to get a measurement. They certified it as a world record.

But the people whose measurements really mattered were the Boone and Crockett officials who certify world records.

After four hours of measuring the deer, they finally declared it a new record with a total measurement of the antlers being 312 3/8 inches.

This eclipsed the previous record, which measured 307 5/8 inches and had 38 nontypical points.

He was finally officially recognized by the Boone and Crockett officials at the annual Boone and Crockett Club Banquet held in the spring of 2019.

The deer antlers are probably worth around $100,000 or more if he chooses to sell them and he can sell a replica to most major sporting goods stores such as Cabela’s for thousands of dollars.

His face and the deer have been on several magazine covers and he is officially famous in the eyes of most deer hunters who only dream of doing what he did.

There were several parts of this story that resonated with me. First, the deer was only 3 ½ years old when he killed it.

The deer was not very old so it probably had very good nutrition along with very good genes from both its father and mother for it to grow so large so fast.

Secondly, the buck had abandoned its regular habits and was in the rut. He was killed in the middle of a bluebird beautiful day.

He had thrown caution to the wind and was killed in the open during the daylight.

And finally, he was killed about 300 miles from Carter County. That tells me that there are other large deer in Tennessee for the taking.

They are here if you are a patient hunter or a lucky hunter.

Along with this, I have to ask myself is there a world record near my hunting area? Will I ever see one this big in the woods myself? Finally, will I be blessed enough to kill one this large?

Tucker, to his credit, said he has eaten almost all of this giant deer and the rest he hopes to make into jerky. Most hunters I know, including myself, do not hunt just for a trophy; we hunt to fill the freezer.

The older I get, the bigger the thrill I get when I kill a doe for the freezer. But as a sportsman, my heart does beat a little faster when I see a buck slipping through the woods.

I think it goes back to our ancestors who had to provide food for the family, and the bigger the animal, the greater the amount of food.

I may never kill a buck that is recognized by any record books, but I don’t lose sleep over it. I am just content to be a deer hunter.

Let everyone else chase their own world record whitetail deer dreams.