Year Of The Giant

Last season was special for top-end bucks, and 2017 could be even better

- Scott Bestul

IN THE ANNALS of trophy whitetail bucks, the year 2016 will go down as one to remember. On Nov. 7, 27-year-old Tennessean Stephen Tucker killed the largest hunter-killed non typical whitetail ever taken. With 47 scorable points, the 312-inch giant easily toppled the long-famous 3075⁄8-inch Lovstuen buck for that distinction. Just a few weeks after Tucker’s buck rocked the whitetail world, on Nov. 21 Iowan Deric Sieck arrowed a 2822⁄8-inch behemoth that now stands as the second-largest bow-killed whitetail in history.

In short, monster-buck lightning struck twice in 2016—and yet the fact that these two giant white tails fell in the same season was, oddly, predictable. In the Feb.–Mar. 2016 issue of FIELD & STREAM, we covered what was widely described as a “crash” in whitetail numbers, in which years of aggressive antlerless harvests combined with a pair of epic EHD outbreaks brought deer numbers down nationwide, and especially in several midwestern trophy-buck strongholds. Making matters worse, northern states endured the monstrous winter of 2012–13, which resulted in winterkills the likes of which had not been seen in decades.

But in our coverage of the crash, Justin Spring, assistant director of records for the Boone and Crockett Club, offered one of the few silver linings. “If history is any teacher, we may see more top-end bucks shot in the next few years,” he told me then. “If you look at our books, most of the really big whitetails came from areas with relatively low deer densities.” It comes down to simple math, he explained. Fewer deer on the landscape means less competition for prime feed and less social stress. “Under those conditions, bucks that have the potential to get truly large have the chance to do so.”