...."Is it real or is it Memorex"...Most of you are probably not old enough to remember that commercial now that we have CDs rather than cassette tapes. The quote does remind me of the Rompola saga.

I am always intrigued by the arguements both for and against the validity of the Rompola buck. I think the little kid inside me wants to believe that it is real. He has always loved adventure stories of make believe, King Kong climbing the Empire State building, Tarzan killing lions and crocodiles with nothing but a knife, and even 'Harry and the Hendersons'. However the adult in me holds the opposite view due to the powers of reason and common sense (what little I have).

What deer hunter was not interested in this story when in broke? It has all the ingedients of a hunter's version of a hit Hollywood movie. A reclusive man of modest resources, who as legend would have it spends all of his time in the woods scouting, planning, and analyzing ways and means to kill phantom monster bucks. Included in the saga is a buck with a rack so big it would easily eclipse the existing world record with a combination of symmetry, spread, and size; the likes of which have never been heretofore seen. To further add to the plot, this buck lives in an area that holds few world class animals and has only been seen by one man-our hunter hero! He is scoffed at, looked upon as a modern day oddity by many, but his walls are adorned with the heads of record book deer that very few hunters in his area even see....Great stuff eh!

Like most here I have read all of the information I could find on this story and being that I lived in Michigan at the time this all went down, perhaps I even found more than the average person.

Much of the deer related information in the saga I can swallow. I am not bothered by the low lying bloody ears, photos where the color might not be what I think it should, or even the distance between the brow tines. Blood can show up in the strangest of places and photos can be affected by light and so many other things it would make your head spin. As far as the space between the G1s I look at it this way. Assuming of course the rack is real, it is a world record for goodness sakes! Why wouldn't it be different from any other rack ever measured. Mother nature has created many oddities that are just that...odd! Different, unusual, exceptional, uncommon, unimaginable, unique, bizarre, strange, idiosyncratic, weird, and unthinkable, would be just a few of the adjectives that could be used to describe some of the freaky things "old Ma" has made. A larger measurement than normal between two brow tines is no more unusual to me than the fishermen that pull out a 20 foot squid when most of them are about ten times smaller.

So much for the little kid's voice...Here is what I can't buy into.....

I don't know Mitch Rompola so the only assessments I can make about the man are the known facts.

It seems to me that what I hear the most of when ever this is the topic of converstation, is that Mitch is a recluse, he hates publicity and doesn't want to have anything to do with it. Perhaps that is true. But here is something that bothers me about that statement. If he is that type of person, how come I see him on a video, pushing a certain deer call? If I am a recluse that hates any type of publicity it seems to me the last place I would want to be is on a video that is being shipped all over the country. Further, I have seen his picture in a book with his story detailing some of the big bucks he has killed before Rompolagate ever came about. Hardly reclusive behavior.

Another rebuttal I hear is that he is disgruntled with B&C and this is his way of "thumbing his nose" at them. Call me stupid but I can't see it that way. There is no record until certified. Until it would be officially confirmed he isn't "thumbing his nose" at B&C or any other organization. The ONLY thing it does is make him look phony. If you want to get B&C's back up, get the rack officially certified and then say no to their offer. Even a recluse knows that.

Then of course there is the lawsuit. The minute you sign a document like that your credibility is destroyed. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out. It is like hanging a sign around your neck that says fraud in front and fake on the back. Forget the money, forget the publicity you don't want (or secretly do), now your integrity and character are at stake. What is that worth? Wouldn't even the simplest among us fight for that?

That cotton pickin "grown-up" in me always brings rain to a parade. [&:]