RE: What is the official record weight of a buck/doe in North America?
 

JimPic - You' re right, it was taken in Minnesota in 1926. I saw pictures of it in a magazine I had, I wish I still had that mag laying around, but can' t seem to find it. That was most definitely one monster of a deer!

RE: What is the official record weight of a buck/doe in North America?
 

No no no, you guys have it all wrong. Don' t you remember a couple years ago when that guy in Kentucky killed that monster of a whitetail, it was absolutely gigantic so he drove it around town showing everyone! Wait, that was an Elk, my fault.

RE: What is the official record weight of a buck/doe in North America?
 

OK I knew I had this one someplace. In The Deer of North America by Leonard Lee Rue III, he writes...

...Henry Ordway killed a giant buck near Mude Lake in the Adirondack Mtns of NY in 1890. It wieghed 388 before dressing but was bled out leading them to believe it was 400 lbs. It had nine tines on one beam and ten o the other and the longest tine was 13 inches. The world record weight for a whitetail was held for years by a buck killed by Albert Tippett in 1919 near Trout Creek in MI' s Upper Pininsula. Railroad scales showed it weighed 354 dressed. The wieghing was witnessed by several people.

Here is the record that I can find (same book)...

Minnesota, November 1926 - Carl Lenander was hunting with his father near Tofte and he shot a buck that field dressed 402 lbs. The conservation dept calculated its live weight to be 511 lbs. No larger buck has ever been officially recorded in North America.

Oh two more this is fun...

Ottis Bersing in his book A Century of WisconsinDeer, described two whitetails that are bigger than the Tippett buck. In 1924 Robert Hogue shot a buck in Sawyer Cty, WI that had a dressed scale weight of 386 lbs and an estimated live weight of 491lbs. Also in 1941, Arnold Peter shot one that dressed at 378 lbs. Rue then goes on to write about more modern heavyweights. 1962, Iowa 440 live weight verified on scales, The Hinkleys of Bingham Maine in 1955- 355 lbs after hanging for three days, there is more.

He also tells earlier in the chapter of two six month old fawns from Illinois. The largest weighed 176 lbs. This was live weight and normal for the area is 90 - 100 lbs. In NJ I could carry some of the six month old deer out in a game pouch!

Its a great book with information that is still helpful to me today. It is long out of print and my binding is cracked from my re-reading it every year.

Greg