Record Whitetail Deer on the Eastern Seaboard Harvested in Maryland

No one was more surprised than William D. Crutchfield Jr. that he was the guy who would harvest not just Maryland’s non-typical whitetail deer record but also the highest-scoring non-typical buck on the Eastern Seaboard, a geographic region comprised of the 13 Original Colonies plus Maine, Vermont, West Virginia, and Florida.

In February 2005, while picking up antler sheds, he came across one near a ladder stand that prompted him to say to a hunting partner, “Someday someone is going to kill a big buck out of that stand.” That someone turned out to be him, and someday would be November 27, 2006. And it was from that ladder stand in Charles County, Maryland.

The antlers measured 269-6/8, according to the score chart from the Boone and Crockett Club, an organization founded in 1887 by Theodore Roosevelt “to promote the conservation and management of wildlife, especially big game, and its habitat, to preserve and encourage hunting[,] and to maintain the highest ethical standards of fair chase and sportsmanship in North America.” This group sets the guidelines for big game hunting and maintains the records.

Antlered animals are scored in one of two categories: typical and non-typical. A typical rack is defined by its symmetry and evenly spaced tines. A score above 170 is in all-time record territory. While non-typical racks also have symmetry, they deviate from the standard or typical rack is unusual and unique ways, often racking up very high scores. All-time records start at 190.

The aughts were a good decade for record whitetail deer. Maryland’s no. 2 non-typical record was picked up in 2005. It scored 254-1/8. Donza L. Watson’s buck scored 248-7/8 and sits in the no. 3 spot. And Maryland’s typical record was set in 2002. It was also the “biggest East Coast typical submitted for entry into the B&C record book since New York’s Roosevelt Luckey buck (198 3/8), which was shot way back in 1939.”

Then 26-year-old Maryland native Kevin C. Miller harvested his 194-0/8-scoring typical buck on November 30, 2002, while hunting in Kent County from “the hotel,” the name he gave his hunting stand that was constructed just 30 yards away from an alfalfa field.