Posted this before, I dont know if it is real or not but one could be swayed either way. If it is real some have called it a one in a million deer....... NOT EVEN CLOSE.



DO YOU know what an octodecillion is? It's the mathematical expression for the number 1 followed by 57 zeroes. The reason I know is because of Mitch Rompola and his claim of killing a world-record deer in Grand Traverse County.


North American Hunter magazine did a story on Rompola that includes a mathematical analysis of his claims of killing a batch of record-book whitetails in Grand Traverse County over 31 years.


I listed those deer in a column a few months ago and noted that he seemed to be impossibly successful in killing record-book deer in an area where no one else was able to get more than one. But I didn't go to a statistician to see if we could figure out just how wild those claims were.


North American Hunter did, asking Dr. Steven Wise of James Madison University to calculate the odds of Rompola's claims. The estimates actually are conservative, because they count only deer that Rompola entered in the records of Commemorative Bucks of Michigan, Pope & Young or Boone and Crockett. It didn't include a bunch more (Rompola gave me different figures in different interviews) he says he never entered.


Here are Wise's calculations:





The odds of anyone taking CBM-quality bucks from Grand Traverse County in seven consecutive years are one in 100 trillion, or one in 100,000,000,000,000.




The odds of taking 11 CBM bucks from Grand Traverse in 31 years are one in 7.04 quadrillion, or one in 7,040,000,000,000,000.




The odds of taking four B&C bucks in Grand Traverse County in 17 years are one in 28.2 quintillion, or one in 28,200,000,000,000,000,000.




The odds of killing nine P&Y bucks in Grand Traverse in nine years are 1 in 16.7 quattuordecillion, or 1 in 16,700,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000.




And the odds of killing 13 P&Y deer in Grand Traverse in 31 years is one in 15.6 octodecillion.

That's one in 15,600,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,-000,000.


If you want to put those numbers in perspective, the magazine did some research and found that:





The odds that an airplane will land on you sometime this year are one in 25,000,000.




The odds that you'll get on a plane with a bomb aboard are one in 100,000,000.




The odds that you'll be hit by lightning tomorrow are one in 250,000,000.

Now I want you to look at the number of zeroes that follow the three instances above, then compare them to the number of zeroes in the odds of Rompola's chances of achieving his hunting records.


Each additional zero multiplies the unlikelihood of the event happening by a factor of 10. And Rompola claims to have killed not just 13 record deer there but about 20, which would add so many zeroes to the odds that I'd doubt we could fit them on this page.


Does that make you wonder? And not just about the world-record deer, but about a lot of Rompola's claims.


A column I did about Rompola last month drew enormous reader response. I was inundated with calls, e-mails and faxes, largely because this story draws interest not just from Michiganders but from hunters elsewhere who read the Free Press on the Internet.


I've spent a lot more time than I wanted on this story. I'll tell you straight out that I could never accept Rompola's "world-record" deer without scrutiny that includes an X ray to prove that the rack hasn't been faked. That decision was based largely on numerous inconsistencies and contradictions in Rompola's own story that are only reinforced by North American Hunter's analysis.


For example, Rompola has told friends he had his deer X-rayed to prove it wasn't a fake, although he won't produce the X ray.


The best reply to that came from Dr. E. Kevin Harmon, a dentist and deer hunter from Lafayette, La., who wrote: "In other words, he wanted to prove to himself that he hadn't accidentally shot a fabricated rack that happened to walk by his stand.


Harmon continued sarcastically: "Personally, I always X-ray every buck I take for the same reason. I don't want to be known as an unethical hunter who shoots fabricated racks in the wild, and if I'm ever asked to show any of the X rays, I always say no."


But there are people who still insist on calling or e-mailing to say they believe Rompola because they "feel" he did it. Is it any wonder that con men can sell the Brooklyn Bridge or "psychics" are hustling those 1-900 numbers on late-night TV?



As far as I'm concerned, there is no world-record Rompola deer. Milo Hanson's 213 5/8 buck, shot in 1993, will be the world's top whitetail until someone submits a bigger rack to Boone & Crockett or Pope & Young for any kind of verification they demand.