A Mystery Solved: The Biggest Whitetail Deer Ever Harvested in Idaho

No one should wonder why Idaho is called the Gem State—it’s for more than just its geological diversity. While true that more than 70 precious and semi-precious gemstones, including one of the rarest, star garnet, are found in Idaho, the state features some of the most outstandingly beautiful places in the United States: Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, a landscape of lava in the center of the state; Hells Canyon, the deepest canyon in North America; and Shoshone Falls, one of the largest waterfalls in the county, surpassing in height Niagara Falls.

For wildlife and outdoor enthusiasts, the adventure doesn’t stop there. Idaho includes 4.8 million acres of wilderness, more than 107,000 miles of rivers, and plenty of wildlife. According to the Boone and Crockett Club, “Idaho has just about any species a hunter would love to hunt”: bighorn sheep, black and grizzly bear, elk, mule and whitetail deer, cougar, pronghorn, Rocky Mountain goat, and Shiras’ moose.

Whitetail deer are widespread in the forests north of the Salmon River while their cousins, mule deer, dominate in the state’s central mountains and southern deserts. Some truly impressive bucks have entered the record books. Read below to learn about the biggest bucks ever harvested in Idaho.

Idaho’s Whitetail ‘Gems’

How Records Are Calculated

With growing concerns over the possibility of losing hunting privileges and wildlife populations such as bison and elk being hunted to the brink of extinction, Theodore Roosevelt and others founded the Boone and Crockett Club in 1887 for the purposes of wildlife conservation and management. This group also developed a scoring system for big game trophies, including whitetail deer.

Many assume an animal’s body size or weight determines which one is the “biggest” or “largest.” In point of fact, the Boone and Crockett scoring system for whitetail deer gives awards for their antler size and complexity. Records are given in two categories, which refer to the symmetry of the rack.

Typical antlers follow a standard pattern, defined by symmetrical tines and evenly spaced points, whereas non-typical racks deviate from the standard in quite unique ways, creating unusual shapes and often earning very high scores. Minimum scores of 170 and 195 for typical and non-typical, respectively, are in all-time record territory.

Official measurers will provide a score to the individual elements on the antlers: the number of points on the antlers, the width of the main beam spread of the antlers from tip to tip, the inside spread, the length of the main beam, the length of the points, and the circumference between points. The collected data are then calculated according to a formula outlined on the score chart to provide a final score.

Typical But Special

The typical whitetail deer record for Idaho belongs to Ronald M. McLamb, who harvested his buck in Bonner County in 2001. The buck scored 186-7/8. Four years later, Mark A. Schilling was just shy of McLamb’s record—three-eighths of an inch—when the buck he harvested scored 186-4/8.

According to Field & Stream, McLamb’s buck “sports a unique, sweeping antler style with long tines and beams. Overall, it features a huge 7×6 configuration, plus a short abnormal point. Most interesting are its 9-6/8- and 7-4/8-inch brow tines. Plus, it’s hard to beat four tines over 10 inches, and two more that nearly reach that. Only one of eight mass measurements is over 4-4/8 inches, and one is less than 4, which is rare for a state record.”

A Hunter’s Identity Revealed

Ryan Hatfield was on a mission to compile a comprehensive history of hunting in Idaho. He gathered photos and stories fairly easily for his first two efforts: Idaho’s Greatest Mule Deer and Idaho’s Greatest Elk. Next on the list? Idaho’s Greatest Whitetails.

A tiny hiccup set back its publication date. The identity of the hunter who harvested the state’s non-typical record—with a score of 267-4/8—was “unknown.” Such a trophy deserved proper recognition. This didn’t sit well with Hatfield, so he made phone calls, sent emails, tracked down leads, and interviewed dozens until he was connected with Betty Cloninger.

She confirmed that her stepfather, Herman Lunders, was the one who felled the trophy buck. She not only verbally confirmed it but also provided a photo.

Lunders shot the buck with his Remington .30-06 pump with a Leupold scope while at work on a lunch break near Kamiah, Idaho, in 1955. His nephew, Keith, recounted the following to Hatfield: “‘Being a section foreman for the [Camas Prairie Railroad], he was at work but had his rifle with him, which was not abnormal in that day and age. He and the crew were eating lunch on the tracks when a big buck and a few does swam the river, headed north. … The story goes that when they reached the other side, Herman was going to shoot the biggest doe for meat, but his workmates convinced him to shoot the big buck instead.'”

Lunders, according to his family, wasn’t interested in trophies; providing for his wife and their 11 children was. His son, Butch, told Hatfield, “‘Knowing Dad, it would have been a neck shot so as to not waste any meat. Usually[,] it would have been the head, but it was obvious with a scope he would have recognized it was special.'”

The buck was given to the Kamiah Gun Club, which had it mounted and where it was displayed for a while. The mount later exchanged hands a number of times before popping up in Texas. In 2010, the Boone and Crockett Club officially changed “unknown” to “Herman Lunders” in its State Big Game Records, 55 years after the fact.

Ryan Hatfield recounts his efforts to locate the identity of Idaho’s non-typical whitetail record for North American Whitetail.