Whitetail deer hunting is so good in Illinois, it draws hunters from near and far. In 2018, a resident of Virginia headed west in hopes of bagging a deer. Oh, boy, did he ever.
When Luke H. Brewster went hunting on November 2, 2018, in Edgar County, Illinois, he might have been hoping to harvest a good-sized buck. What he got shook the hunting world. The Brewster buck upset—in a good way—the Boone and Crockett and Pope & Young non-typical whitetail deer records.
First, records for big game are given according to a scoring system created by the Boone and Crockett Club. In the case of antlered animals like whitetail deer, the antlers are measured in two categories: typical and non-typical. As the words suggest, “typical” refers to antlers that follow a standard pattern, defined by symmetrical tines and evenly spaced points, and “non-typical” deviate from this standard in quite unusual ways.
Second, the Boone and Crockett Club recognizes trophies harvested by all legal hunting methods (e.g., rifle, bow; however, please refer to your state’s regulations) as well as those that are picked up or found. The Pope & Young Club uses the scoring system from Boone & Crockett Club but solely maintains records for archery-taken big game trophies. Brewster arrowed the buck.
Illinois’ highest-scoring non-typical whitetail deer record belongs to a Virginia hunter who harvested his buck in Edgar County in 2018.
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The Brewster Buck
Luke H. Brewster‘s non-typical whitetail scored 327-7/8, trouncing Pope & Young’s previous world record by nearly 34 inches, eclipsing Illinois’ state record by more than 23 inches as recognized by Boone and Crockett ; and becoming the no. 3 highest-scoring non-typical buck in the world and therefore the highest-scoring non-typical buck ever hunter-taken because the no. 1 and 2 spots belong to bucks that were found, according to the Boone and Crockett Club.
Michael Beatty harvested his Pope & Young record buck on November 8, 2000, during Ohio’s archery season. It scored 294.
The Illinois state record belonged to Jerry D. Bryant, who bagged his buck with a crossbow, which he was permitted to use after suffering a work injury that made it so that he was unable to pull back on his compound. The Bryant Crossbow Buck scored 304-3/8.
The two bucks that scored higher than Brewster’s were both picked up. In the no. 1 spot is the Missouri Monarch, an 11-pound rack belonging to a deer found dead inside a fence by the side of the road in St. Louis County, Missouri, in 1981. It scored 333/-7/8.
No. 2 in the world—nicknamed the Hole in the Horn—met its end on the rails. This buck was taken down by a train in 1940 in Portage County, Ohio, and it hung in the Kent Canadian Club in Kent, Ohio, for 40-odd years before it was officially scored at 328-2/8 at Boone and Crockett’s 19th Big Game Awards in 1986.
Forgotten and Found
The record for Illinois’ highest-scoring typical buck held for nearly six decades before falling in 2022 to a man, Sam Aiuppa, who would describe himself as more of a bird hunter.
Writing for Boone and Crockett, PJ DelHomme writes,
After a long day of hunting pheasants in Lasalle County, Illinois, Sam Aiuppa put the dog away and climbed into a stand along the timber. He replaced birdshot with a slug in his Remington 870 shotgun and waited for evening. It was late November and the peak of the whitetail rut—the perfect time to find a buck with its guard down. After 40 minutes or so, a buck sauntered under his stand. Aippua shot it in the face.
The year was 1991, and that buck’s rack didn’t see the light of day for 30 years as Aiuppa mounted the antlers and then stuck it in his basement, where it remained until an electrical issue uncovered them. The electrician, a friend of Aiuppa, knew there was something special there when he saw them.
And there was. The antlers scored 207-7/8, besting by 3-3/8 inches the decades-long record held by Melvin J. Johnson.
Johnson arrowed his buck about 15 minutes from his home in Peoria, Illinois, on October 29, 1965. It scored 204-4/8. Johnson’s typical buck still holds the Pope & Young record, and it remains the only North American big game animal ever to receive both the Ishi and Sagamore Hill awards, which are handed out by Pope & Young and the Boone and Crockett Club, respectively.
