While the Georgia Department of Natural Resources is tasked with the management and conservation of the state’s wildlife resources, the Boone and Crockett Club sets guidelines for and maintains trophy hunting records for big game animals, including whitetail deer, Georgia’s only species of deer with an estimated state population over 1 million. Translation? The state has plenty of deer to harvest and a hunting season that “runs well past the regular college football season.”
According to the state’s Deer Management Plan 2015-2024, “the statewide deer population is currently at an ecologically appropriate level,” although “local populations vary widely across the state.” The state manages its population primarily through regulated hunting. The bag limit in Georgia is 12, of which 2 can be antlered, one of which “must have at least 4 points, one inch or longer, on one side of the antlers or at least a 15-inch outside spread,” per hunting regulations.
With lots of deer needing management, Georgia offers plenty of opportunities to fill one’s refrigerator with lean, high-protein deer meat and decorate one’s walls with mounts of sizable and—one hopes—record-setting mounts.
Big game trophy records for whitetail deer are handed out in two categories: typical and non-typical. In Georgia, both records have been at the top of the charts for several decades.
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For the Record Books
Since 1887, the Boone and Crockett Club has been the keeper of big game trophy records. The club recognizes two categories of whitetail deer: typical and non-typical. These categories refer to the antlers, their growth patterns, and their complexity, not the body size or weight of the animal.
Typical antlers follow a standard pattern defined by symmetrical tines and evenly spaced points. A non-typical set of antlers deviates from the standard in quite unusual ways, creating stunning and strange shapes and designs; these racks can be scored very high.
Scores refer to the measurements and counts of 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 measurements are entered into a formula outlined on a score chart to provide a final score. Final scores above 170 and 195 are in all-time record territory for the typical and non-typical categories, respectively.
The largest, or the record-setting, typical whitetail deer harvested in Georgia scored 191-4/8. Buck Ashe has held this record since 1962. According to an article on the Georgia Outdoor News website, Ashe was known to exclusively hunt with a recurve bow, and he bagged a number of trophy deer with that bow. Just not this one. The deer was shot with a .30-30 rifle.
While Georgia hunters have been chasing Ashe’s record for more than six decades, hunters around the world have been trying hard to fell Milo N. Hanson‘s world record typical buck that he shot in 1992. This buck, harvested on Hanson’s property in Biggar, Saskatchewan, Canada, was scored at 213-5/8.
In the non-typical category for Georgia, the record belongs to Billy Joe Padgett for shooting a whitetail deer that scored 249-5/8 in 1998. The non-typical world record was found dead along the side of the road a few states northwest, in Missouri in 1981. The buck, nicknamed the Missouri Monarch, was scored 333-7/8.
With plenty of deer in the state and that bag limit of 12, one can be hopeful that sometime soon those state records will fall to more recently harvested bucks.
