The Game Warden's Corner: What's it score?
Wildlife officer Dustin Burke examines the evolution of whitetail deer hunting and the unfortunate obsession with antler sizes
By DUSTIN BURKE
If you know me, you know that deer hunting is something I obsess with, it’s something that I find myself thinking about at least a dozen times a day. This may sound like a problem to some, but it’s the one thing that has always been a constant to me since I was a boy. When it wasn’t deer season, my dad would buy a North American Whitetail magazine from Walmart. I would read those magazines cover to cover. Just as Ralphie Parker daydreamed about a Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle from The Christmas Story, I was daydreaming about killing a deer like the “Minesota Monarch.” My grandpa had found a non-typical shed when he was younger and “deer were bigger,” as he always explained. Like a dog with a prize bone, I carried that thing everywhere. Matter of fact, I still have it today and display it on my kitchen counter. There was always just something about deer antlers that kept me mesmerized.
On the weekends, my sister and I went to our dad’s house. A perk of going to dad’s during deer season was, just as a kid waking up and hoping Santa Claus came, we would wake up to my grandpa or Uncle Dale beckoning us to come look at the deer they had killed, laying in the back of the truck. I knew one day this would be me. It just had to be!
Fast-forward to 1993 and Dad decided I was old enough to not only go hunting, but old enough to give it the respect it deserved. He signed me up for the hunters’ education safety class, and I was a nervous wreck. Hunting was something I had dreamed about since I could remember and passing this class was the only thing that stood between me and hunting.
I passed the class and deer season couldn’t get here quick enough! As it got closer, Dad would come home from working all day and try to scout places to hunt. My grandpa, uncle Dale, and Dad schemed and threw out ideas. A few weeks before juvenile season, we made a trip to Walmart to get my first set of hunting cloths. We got some Walls coveralls and a pair of boots. The excitement was hard to contain. I talked about it at school, and I talked about it at home.
The Friday before opening juvenile season, we rushed home so we could make sure the gun was “sighted in.” For some reason, Dad was adamant that I was to only use the “iron sights” on the rifle. At the time, it confused me, because it had a scope on it. Looking back on that and having kids of my own now, he wanted to make it as simple as possible!
That morning, the day of November 6th, the year of our Lord 1993, Dad wakes me up and I immediately smell fried bologna being made in the kitchen. He is making us fried bologna sandwiches. To this day, every time I smell that smell, it reminds me of hunting with my dad. I wiped the sleep from my eyes and walked out on the porch — well, wait, I just opened the front door and the cold hit me. My excitement turned immediately into “can we wait until it gets warmer?” That was not an option.
So, I layered up like Ralphie’s brother, Randy, on The Christmas Story. We made it to our spot, get out of the truck and Dad sprayed me with some stuff that smelled like dirt. We took off walking to “the spot”. I remember carrying his Marlin 30-30 and walking behind him, just trying to step in all the same places as he did. I don’t think I looked up a handful of times. I was so afraid to make any noises, and each time a twig would break, my muscles would tense up a little tighter each step.
By the time we made it to “the spot”, I was worn out from the adrenaline and the excitement. Dad had made a natural ground blind under a group of cedar trees overlooking a small grown-up field. We didn’t have fancy shooting houses, didn’t have pop up blinds, and weren’t hunting out of tree stands. We were just sitting on the ground.
The sun came up and I was visualizing how this would even work and where a deer would come from. Every sound had my heart racing and asking Dad, “what was that?”. After an hour of sitting there exhausting my eyes and tapping him on the leg asking what sound that was, Dad decided to take some antlers and rattle them together. I had seen this stuff on some Roger Raglin videos that he had rented from the video store. As soon as the antlers went together, my heart was leaping out of my chest, and my head swiveled like a turret on a WW2 tank! I remember Dad stopped rattling and grunted three short grunts and one long one.
Suddenly, the distinct sound of running and leaves crashing is getting closer. As I look to where the sound was coming from, a deer comes running down the hill and straight towards us. It’s definitely a buck, because I can see white antlers moving up and down with its head. The buck comes straight to a small tree that was 30 yards in front of us, where Dad had hung some Tinks 69 from a scent rag he made before we left.
As this deer stood there for what seemed like eternity — but was just 30-40 seconds — all I could do was just stare in amazement. I was starstruck! I had waited my whole life for this moment. Imagine being the biggest Peyton Manning fan ever, and one day he is standing 30 yards in front of you! This was the exact same feeling. I had watched hunting videos with bucks. I had read article after article about bucks. Hell, I had dreamed many nights about this very moment. Ironically, I was frozen like a deer in the headlights.
The deer turns and walks back the way he came, and Dad says, “are you going to shoot it or what?” The rest is history, literally! My very first hunt, within the first two hours of my first hunt, I have not only just seen my very first alive buck, but I had my very first buck in my hands! It was nothing that would get my picture in the North American Whitetail magazine, but it was a very respectable non-typical 8-point. The excitement building up to that moment, the excitement while in the moment, and to this day the excitement of that day still makes me smile. I told the story at school, and I smiled the rest of the year. I couldn’t wait to get the deer back from the taxidermist and that deer still hangs on my wall proudly to this day. From that point on, I was hooked! I was addicted! No, I have not received counseling or attended AA classes, not one single time! Matter of fact, killing a “monster buck” has consumed me since that day!
The chase for that “monster buck” has caused many issues in personal relationships — to the point that at 43 years old it’s common knowledge that “deer hunting” isn’t far behind my children on my list of important things. I have been blessed, more than blessed to be honest. I have harvested some nice deer from Tennessee and been lucky to have hunted a few years in northeast Ohio.
I went to Ohio in 2017, when a really good friend said “come up and spend a few days hunting, it will help you get away!” I took him up on the offer, and drove to New Philadelphia, Ohio. Each and every day I spent hunting those four days, I felt like a kid again. I was excited to get to sleep! I dreamed about one of those “Ohio giants” that you read about in North American Whitetail. I woke up each morning just as excited as the morning before. I got in the tree stand, and every rustle of leaves, every pop of a twig, had my heart racing out of my chest. That same feeling that I got when I was a kid was back again! In my heart and mind, the odds of a huge buck stepping out had to be better up here! Well, for 3 days, the biggest buck I had seen, was a little basket-racked 7-point. At home, I would have been discouraged, but not in Ohio! The third night, coming out from the tree stand, we saw a really big 10-point chasing a doe in the field. We watched it for a little bit and on the way home, we devised a plan. On the last day I had to hunt, I ended up shooting a 146” 10-point that field dressed at 263 lbs.! That means, this deer alive, would have been over 300 lbs. Each and every feeling I had at 11 years old came back again!
After that trip, I constantly dreamed of hunting in Ohio. In 2021, the same buddy asked me if I would want to get on a lease with him and another guy. I jumped on it quicker than a fat kid on a Snickers bar! The next four years, I watched my cellular trail cameras and was hooked to my phone like glue. I was a trail camera crackhead! It kept my excitement all year long. I got to spend some great trips with my friends Dave and Shon. I got to enjoy many memories with both of my kids. I had some very memorable hunts. One time I shot at the same deer not once, not twice, but three times with a bow! I missed all three times to be exact. My son and I once sat in the pouring rain of a hurricane and lucked up killing two deer within 15 minutes. One hunt, I rattled in a deer from across the river. The deer literally dove in the river, over its head on a mission to get to me and my son. I got to see him make an amazing shot on that deer. I got to not only see my buddy Dave harvest some good deer, but we laughed each and every time we were together.
The last year, the phone rang at 3:30 a.m. because of a horrible OHV accident had happened on the wildlife management area. Since I’m not only a game warden but also a sergeant, that meant I needed to answer that call. I helped the best I could to coordinate people and machines from my hotel room in Carrollton, Ohio so they could reach the patient. I felt helpless in Ohio and it honestly left me not wanting to do anything. Plus, it was supposed to rain around 9 a.m., but it was our last full day to hunt. Being up since 3:30 a.m., and pending rain, I was on the fence about even going hunting because I hadn’t seen much on camera nor seen much from my tree stands. My buddy Shon convinced me to go hunting anyway. By 9 a.m., I had put an arrow in an awesome 143” buck and was Facetiming the guys working the accident to share it with them. The short of the long, I made some absolute amazing memories! Memories with family and memories with friends. Memories that hang on my wall and the rest I tell in stories!
I say all that, to explain this. Deer hunting has changed so much in my 43 years. Some of these changes have been great, and some of them have been less than favorable. I have seen some black and white pictures of some really, really big bucks killed when my grandpa was in his 20s and 30s. Do you think those deer were hanging on the wall when I was born? Nope. Memories, stories, and some black and white photos are all that existed of these big deer. Killing “monster bucks” was not a thing back then. I am sure they bragged about killing a big deer, but it wasn’t what the sport was about. I wasn’t around back then, but I like to believe they did it for all the right reasons.
Some say the best days of deer hunting was in the late 90s and early 2000s. I couldn’t agree more, for many reasons. Around the mid to late 90s, Bill Jordan, founder of Realtree and Toxey Haas of Mossy Oak started televising shows such as Realtree Monster Bucks, Realtree Road Trips, Mossy Oaks Hunting the Country, and Remington Country. This really started the full-steam-ahead commercialization of the hunting industry. On one hand, it brought attention and popularity to a sport that desperately needed it. It brought better equipment to the table, better weapons, and evolving technology in the forms of trail cameras, scopes, and range finders, just to name a few. It created the idea that if you didn’t have the best camo, the best scent blocking clothing, the fastest bow, the next best rifle cartridge, or the most expensive tree stand then you couldn’t kill a “monster buck”.
Today, archery companies will change one little thing from the previous year model bow and sell it as the new best thing for $1,200 to $2,000. Camo patterns have seemingly started coming back around to the original patterns from the early days, except now they sell them on the most expensive scent-blocking, UV-blocking, fancy-named clothing, and you will pay anywhere from $500 to $2,000 for a set of hunting clothes you wear a handful of times throughout the year. The rest of the time, these expensive comfortable hunting clothes will reside in a fancy scent-blocking bag after you have washed them in scent-erasing laundry detergent and dried them with dirt-scented dyer sheets.
While we are on the subject of erasing scent, we now have fancy little wind-blowing machines we can hang above our heads that apparently can take human scent out of the air — for a price, of course.
I am not one of the guys that has to buy a brand-new bow every year, but I do have a 5-year-old Mathews bow that I got used. I haven’t bought new hunting cloths since 2009 but have thrown around the idea a few times over the years. I take a little trip to Bass Pro Shop and realize the old Scent Lok that I have is just as good. I do have quite a few of the fancy cellular trail cameras. In the quest to kill “monster deer,” this has been one of my “have to have” pieces of equipment. It’s almost more addicting than the hunting itself, to be honest. But, ironically, three of the five bucks I killed in Ohio I didn’t have on camera one single time. Trail cameras have been an invention that have helped but also hurt. More times than I would like to admit, I have chosen not to hunt a spot or not go hunting because I had no activity on my trail cameras.
All of this talk about the commercialization of hunting with the great technology hasn’t hurt hunting as much as harvesting “monster bucks” or “trophy deer”! Ironically, the title “trophy deer” isn’t based off each individual’s trophy, but off what everyone else’s “trophy deer” is. I have harvested quite a few 110” to 125” bucks and been happy as can be about them — until I compared it to someone else’s deer or got caught up in the score.
So that brings up the question: “What is a trophy deer?”. I think you could ask five people and probably get six different answers. No, I know my math isn’t math’n, but I assure you someone will change their mind once they hear what everyone else’s trophy is! As I grew up, a trophy was measured by points. You might have harvested a basket-rack 10-point, but it was still a 10-point! Then at about age 19 or 20, I became an avid bowhunter and the trophy was anything that would make Pope & Young at 125”. This was also still in the early 90s. Somewhere along the way, the trophy went from 125” to it was only a monster buck if it was 150” or more. And thanks to those shows I mentioned earlier, along with quite a few more since, if you don’t harvest a 150” or more deer every year, then you aren’t even a hunter! You can post your 125” to 140” deer on social media and be as happy as a deer hunter could be — until the “trophy hunters” come along, telling you how you “should have let that one walk”, or that it is “not a bad deer for a 3.5 year old”, or “that deer would have been a lot bigger next year.” Those people will have you thinking that maybe you shouldn’t have harvested that deer and will almost having you claiming it was a “management deer.”
While we are on the 150” subject, let’s toss around some numbers. There are an estimated 9.1 million whitetailed deer hunters in the United States, give or take a few. Out of those millions, only 40 to 50% are even successful each year. Actually, we are going to lean more towards 40% than 50%. It is said or believed that less than 5% of bowhunters ever harvest a deer bigger than 125” — in their entire lifetime! The number of deer that grow to be that coveted 150” or more are a lot less than 40%. Actually, it is somewhere below 10%, and getting a deer that is 170” or more is less than 1%. I am not trying to discourage the “monster buck” guy but rather put it all into perspective. It makes perfect sense, because all the factors it takes a whitetailed deer to make that benchmark of 150” aren’t plentiful (i.e. genetics, age hunting pressure, health, etc.). These stats can really open your eyes. It almost shows you that the “trophy hunter” is in the minority … almost.
The bigger picture is, as a whole, the growing standard on judging other hunters by how many inches of bone they have in their hands. (We are talking about Boone & Crockett and Pope & Young scores on antlers — get your mind out of the gutter!) How many times have you seen a person on social media in a picture holding their “trophy deer” in their hands and they don’t even have a smile on their face? One thing I can say, whether it was a 5-point or a 14-point, I have always had the biggest smile on my face! Or you see them posting a celebratory picture of accomplishment, to just downplay in the description that it wasn’t the big one they was looking for, but it would do? I’d say I’ve even been guilty of this one myself.
Deer hunting has started down a path of being a “wealthy game” instead of an activity that brings us peace, joy, challenge, accomplishments, and memories. A game of if we don’t harvest a 170” buck than we should be ashamed.
I circle back to my hunts in Ohio. This year, the farmer sold the farm we leased. He bettered himself and you can’t blame him for that at all. No doubt, the commercialization again has played into this . Trying to find a place to hunt in about any state that has been sold as having “monster bucks” is like winning the lottery. You either have money to buy land yourself, have family with land or connections, or be ready to pay $3,500 to $5,000 a person to lease a property. Even in states that aren’t known for “monster bucks,” you will still be hard pressed to find a lease that is less than $1,500 to $2,000. Here in Scott County, TN, we are blessed with close to 200,000 acres or more of public land with the North Cumberland WMA and the Big South Fork Recreational Area. With that being said, “monster buck” hunting in these places will take some realistic expectations or otherwise you will finish almost every hunt discouraged.
Aldo Leopold, who was an avid lifelong hunter and author of Sand County Almanac, saw hunting as a way to understand the natural world and connect with nature in a way that it wasn’t just a sport. I will take it one step further and say hunting is about making lifelong memories with family and friends. As sure as I am that we are all guilty of getting caught up with the Jordans, Lakoskys, and Waddells” and thinking you must have the best of this and the best of that in order to harvest a trophy animal. I still strive to harvest a 150”-plus deer with my 5-year-old Mathews (and if someone wants to give me a new bow, I wouldn’t turn it down) and my 16-year-old Mossy Oak Treestand Scent Lok! I have found killing a nice, mature 5-point gives me the same sense of accomplishment, and getting to share that with a friend or even better family is icing on the cake. Yes, I still daydream about big deer and I now have a subscription to North American Whitetail. I periodically draw or paint whitetailed deer as a coping mechanism when it is not hunting season. Yes, I come home some days and just sit on the couch to look at my deer mounts, just to remember each memory with them and smile. Now I find just as much joy when one of my kids harvest an animal and I’ve noticed I get “buck fever” worse with them than I have ever gotten by myself.
If you harvest a deer, I will be your biggest fan and help you anyway I can. On the whole, we need to remember the feelings we got when we first went hunting. Remember the time we first harvested our first deer. The feeling when we harvested our biggest deer. Or we could get a little deeper and appreciate a crisp morning, watching the sun rise over the horizon. As the sun rises, and the thermals rise in the sky, you get to hear those precious sounds of morning and the life pouring back into the forest. You remember how to have fun again — how to appreciate each other and the memories we get to make with each other … getting to teach someone the “ins and outs” of hunting and nature … and remembering that everyone’s trophy is different, whether it’s a “Kentucky 11-pointer” or a 135” 10-point!
Harvesting a deer will always be an accomplishment. We are stewards of this sport we call hunting and of this land we call home. Let’s respect one another. Let’s raise each other up. Let’s do better about protecting it as a whole!
Sgt. Dustin Burke, of Oneida, is a wildlife officer with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.