No one was more surprised than William D. Crutchfield Jr. that he harvested Maryland’s non-typical whitetail deer record, which is also the highest-scoring non-typical buck on the Eastern Seaboard, a geographic region comprising the 13 Original Colonies plus Florida, Maine, Vermont, and West Virginia.
Recording Decade of Hunting
The aughts (2000s) were a good decade for record whitetail deer—both typical and non-typical.
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, with a score above 170 considered an all-time record. Non-typical racks, while having their own sense of symmetry, deviate from the standard in unusual and unique ways, often racking up very high scores. All-time records start at 190.
Big and Non-Typical
Maryland’s non-typical record antlers measured 269-6/8 inches, 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.” The Boone and Crockett Club sets the guidelines for big game hunting and maintains official records.
In February 2005, while picking up antler sheds in Charle County, William D. Crutchfield Jr. came across a non-typical set 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 Crutchfield, and someday would be November 27, 2006.
The state’s no. 2 non-typical record was picked up in 2005 and scored 254-1/8. The no. 3 spot belongs to Donza L. Watson’s non-typical buck, which scored 248-7/8 inches and was harvested in 2007.
Although Maryland might not be one’s first guess as a place for record bucks, the state’s records speak for themselves.
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Big and Typical
The first decade of the 2000s saw 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.” On November 30, 2002, then-26-year-old Maryland native Kevin C. Miller harvested his 194-0/8-scoring typical buck 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.
