The authenticity of a massive 49-point buck that was recently panel-scored by the Wisconsin Buck and Bear Club has been called into question by wildlife authorities and the hunting community.
The buck, which reportedly has a net score exceeding 306 inches, was displayed at the Open Season Deer and Turkey Expo in Wisconsin Dells on March 29, where it was promoted as the pending “non-typical state-record gun (muzzleloader)” buck. If these claims are correct, the deer would shatter the existing 253-inch record and make it the largest nontypical ever taken in the state. But critics argue the buck is clearly a pen-raised deer that is being passed off as a free-range animal, pointing — in part — to the mount’s bleach-white antlers and unbroken tines.
Neither the Wisconsin Buck and Bear Club nor the hunter have publicly addressed the criticism, which has fueled speculation. Now the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has opened an investigation into the buck, a DNR spokesperson told Outdoor Life Wednesday. Because it’s an active investigation, the agency declined to provide any details around the case.
Outdoor Life tried contacting the hunter, who is identified on the score sheet as Richard Waters, but did not receive a response. Waters has not said anything publicly about the deer nor spoken on the record with any media outlets. The chairman of the WBBC told OL in an emailed statement that the organization “is presently not commenting” on the situation.
Waters, who attended the Expo according to several attendees who spoke on background to OL, reportedly claimed that he had killed the buck under fair chase conditions in December with a muzzleloader. The deer was panel-scored at the Expo by official measurers with the Wisconsin Buck and Bear Club, according to multiple sources who were present at the show. But that score would have to be verified by the Boone & Crockett Club to become a legitimate record. Neither B&C nor the Wisconsin Buck and Bear Club accepts animals that are raised in pens or killed behind high fences.
One of those sources, Dan Cole, is a freelance outdoor writer who traveled from Minnesota to attend the Expo and write an article about what he’d heard was a pending record buck.
“I was shown a picture [of the buck] by a person prior to the show, about a month and a half ago, and we both knew it was most likely a game-farm deer,” says Cole. “I just held out hope that it was going to be wild.”
Cole says WBBC scorers told him they first measured Waters’ buck a few months ago. The fact that the buck was going to be panel-scored at the Expo in April made him think the deer might be legitimate, after all. He traveled to the show to find out.
“When they first brought out the shoulder mount, I walked up and put my hand on the burring area near the bases, and all those points were razor sharp — if you’d have grabbed them tight enough, you could’ve drawn blood. That, to me, was an indication of a deer that died right out of velvet,” Cole tells Outdoor Life. Deer shed their velvet in late August and early September — months ahead of Wisconsin’s gun season. “Well, at the time, I said, ‘Hey this deer is right out of velvet.’ And that measurer’s face just went completely pale.”
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Cole, who was previously an official scorer with Minnesota clubs for more than 30 years, tells OL that the extremely sharp tines are one red flag. He also notes that none of the 49 points were chipped or broken, or even showed signs of rubbing. This would be unusual for a wild deer of this size that had survived the rut and was tagged during the late season.
“The big talk at the show was that Buck and Bear was going to let Boone & Crockett make the final decision,” Cole says. “But then I also heard just recently that that score sheet never actually left their file and never went to Boone & Crockett.”
B&C’s deputy director of big-game records confirmed with OL Wednesday that they have not received a score sheet on the deer.
Aside from the shoulder mount that was shown at the Wisconsin Dells Expo, there are few pictures circulating of the pending record deer not taken on the show floor. There are no known trail cam photos or pictures of the buck before it was killed, and the closest thing to a post-hunt photo is so blurred and shadowy that the hunter appears to be sitting on a shoulder mount and not an actual deer.
The buck’s antlers are also chalk-colored, or “napkin white,” as Cole puts it. This is common among pen-raised deer, as they don’t usually have access to the trees and shrubs that wild deer rub their antlers on. The only other time you see antlers that white, Cole explains, is when a buck has just shed its velvet, which suggests there’s no way Waters killed the buck in December. Wisconsin’s 2024 muzzleloader season ran from December 2 to 11.
“I went around the display board and [looked at] every deer, and there wasn’t one of them that had white antlers like that,” Cole says. “It really doesn’t matter what [the hunter’s] story is. It isn’t the truth. Because this deer died in late August, early September.”
Deer & Deer Hunting posted an article Tuesday showing the Waters buck alongside a photo of a pen-raised buck that allegedly came from a Wisconsin deer farm and died several years ago. The similarities between the two bucks are striking, D&DH noted, but the source of the photo is unverified. D&DH has also reported that Waters signed an affidavit with WBBC saying the buck was a free-range whitetail, and that he shot it with a muzzleloader near Harrisville in Marquette County.
“When you sign a score sheet, you are stating that one, the deer was taken by means of fair chase and two, that the deer was killed in the wild … If someone lied there, I don’t know if that’s fraud or what the charges would be,” says Cole, who notes that Waters left the show before he could interview him. “But I do know that the Buck and Bear Club isn’t going to escape this without getting a big black eye on social media.”
Cole adds that there was some disruption in the measuring room at one point during the show on March 29. He says he heard multiple comments about how some of the WBBC measurers were not on board with scoring the deer and didn’t even want it at the Expo. As is common in other record-keeping organizations, official measurers can refuse to score a buck if they don’t think it was taken legitimately, or for any other reason.
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