One for the Wall

Who can explain the allure of a trophy deer?

By Tom Dickson

Most deer hunters dream of doing just once what Bill Lewno of Forest Lake has accomplished seven times: kill a trophy-sized whitetail buck. On the walls of Lewno's tidy two-story home, set in an oak grove near Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area, hang magnificent mounts of massive deer, including some of the highest- scoring bucks ever taken by bow in Anoka County. One is a thick-necked buck with a "typical" (left and right antlers mirror each other) rack of three 1-foot-long tines on each main beam. Another buck is crowned with a massive "non-typical" (asymmetrical antlers) rack sprouting a total of 16 tines.

Lewno, 57, has also shot a huge 8-pointer, a 9-pointer, and three 10-pointers. Admiring a 10-pointer mounted above his fireplace, Lewno says, "That's about as perfect a rack as you'll ever find."

Such remarkable mounts are showing up more frequently over mantles throughout Minnesota. As deer populations have increased and hunting success rates have risen during the past two decades, many hunters have set their sights on big bucks. The number of record-book entries is soaring; pay-to-hunt ranches are doing a brisk business; and hunting magazines adorned with monster buck covers crowd newsstand racks.

To trophy hunters, this big-buck boom reflects strong interest in deer hunting and recognition of the whitetail's many admirable qualities. Some other hunters fret about the possibility that antler mania could hurt hunting by making it more exclusively for the rich and less palatable to the non-hunting public. Meanwhile, Department of Natural Resources deer managers search for ways to appease a small but vocal number of hunters clamoring for more big bucks.

Bonkers for Antlers

Interest in large deer stretches back thousands of years. The Lascaux cave of southern France contains images of large-antlered deer painted by Stone Age hunters 12,000 to 40,000 years ago.

From the 14th to 16th centuries, European nobles "went bonkers for huge antlers," according to Valerius Geist, retired professor of environmental science at the University of Calgary and a world-renowned expert in ungulate biology. European nobles lined their manor halls with mounts of huge red deer. They viewed the massive animals, says Geist, as an "expression of the quality of their land, the ability of a lord to produce something exceptional."

Unfortunately for peasant farmers, this antler obsession led to widespread destruction. According to Geist, hunting parties of 30 to 40 drunken nobles on horseback trampled standing crops, orchards, and vineyards as they followed their hounds in pursuit of stags. Often they forced peasants to abandon their harvest and help with the hunts. Geist says it was "an abuse so prevalent that it eventually led to a major eruption in social order." The ensuing Peasant War of 1524?25, he explains, set off a chain of revolts that disrupted Europe for 300 years and eventually led to the French Revolution.

Today's Big Chase

As was the case in Europe, trophy hunting in the early United States was undertaken primarily by rich sportsmen. After World War II, hunting for food became less important to an increasingly affluent middle class, and interest in trophy hunting picked up. Then in the 1970s and '80s, as deer populations mushroomed because of improved deer management, a trophy boom began. DNR wildlife biologists estimate that roughly one deer in 100 qualifies as a trophy--a subjective term that roughly translates into a rack with at least four 7-inch-long tines on each main beam.

The Montana-based Boone and Crockett Club, which keeps North American records of big game taken in the wild, has seen a surge of entries as more hunters shoot trophy-sized animals. For example, more than one-fourth of Minnesota's entries into the club's 150 years of whitetail records have come during the past 10 years.

Though deer shot in fenced game farms don't qualify as Boone and Crockett records, bucks hunted in unfenced preserves do, if taken according to the club's fair-chase ethic. And some hunters will pay top dollar for the chance to hunt private preserves managed for big bucks. For example, one hunting ranch advertises that for $4,800, "trophy hunters will have the opportunity to harvest the buck of their choice."

Deer breeders have begun mating and even artificially inseminating whitetails to produce super bucks with gargantuan antlers. In 1996 Louisiana game breeder Larry Barger paid $150,000 for the world's highest-scoring live buck, with a 30-inch-wide rack and Boone and Crockett score of 3012/8. The buck's semen was drawn and divided into 50 doses, which Barger sold for $1,500 apiece to breeders who hoped to produce new world-record bucks by artificially inseminating does.

Some whitetail fans use a checkbook rather than a rifle to bag a trophy. Hunting magazines advertise replicas of famous mounts, such as the "Kansas King," one of the largest trophy deer of all time. The replicas of the king sell for $995.

Collectors such as Wisconsin businessman Larry Huffman spend tens of thousands for authentic top record-book racks. Huffman has amassed a collection of legendary mounts, including the Jordan (world's second highest scoring) and Breen (world's sixth highest scoring) bucks. An avid deer hunter who considers the whitetail "the greatest animal on this earth," Huffman says he hopes to create a museum for his collection.

As the price for trophy heads has gone up, so has the number of periodicals and products touting images of big bucks. Until the late 1970s, newsstands only occasionally displayed deer-hunting specialty magazines. Today, hunters can find a dozen different deer-hunting publications. The covers of North American Whitetail, Buckmasters, Bowmasters, and others feature huge whitetails with massive antlers--deer that few hunters will ever see, much less kill. Inside, sandwiched between how-to articles and profiles of lucky hunters, are pages festooned with ads for electronic deer-monitoring devices, human-scent eliminators, doe-urine attractors, and other potions and gadgets promising to deliver a "wall-hanger."

Why the Big Attraction?

Just as fashion magazines feature impossibly beautiful women while advertising cosmetics and other products to help female readers achieve that elusive image on the cover, deer-hunting magazines sell an ideal to their mostly male audience.

A link between antlers and male fertility has long been believed in some Asian cultures, in which many men still ingest powdered horn or antler to cure impotence. Some North American hunters acknowledge that showing off large antlers can be a metaphor for displaying male virility.

"I think [trophy deer interest] has much to do with the male fascination with nature's most extravagant and beautiful secondary sex characteristics," says Steve Grooms, an outdoor writer and past editor of the Minnesota Deer Classic Record Book, a compilation of trophy whitetail records and hunting stories.

Another explanation for killing large deer: It advertises a hunter's talents in the field. "Today, we no longer measure our abilities as outdoorsmen by the weight of the game bag," says Hugh Price, coordinator of the Minnesota Deer Classic, an annual exposition of trophy deer mounts. "A trophy deer is a way for someone to say, 'I'm a skilled hunter who's able to take the most elusive of big-game animals. I've put in my time. I've acquired a certain level of craftsmanship.'"

Some hunters believe that killing and then displaying a big-racked whitetail pays homage to the species' exceptional qualities. Jay McAninch, a DNR deer expert who once viewed trophy mounts with disdain, has changed his outlook in recent years. "After meeting with many big-game trophy hunters, who have an almost reverence for the animals they've killed, I now look at [the mounts] as a way of honoring the best nature has to offer," he says.

But others question the value of pursuing trophy deer. Rob Wegner, a deer-hunting historian and past publisher of Deer and Deer Hunting magazine, fears that emphasis on trophies could erode public acceptance of hunting.

"Most people don't approve of killing an animal just to put it on the wall," says Wegner. He cites the research done by Stephen Kellert of Yale University, who found in the late 1970s that 82 percent of non-hunters disapproved of hunting for trophies. A 1992 DNR survey found a similar response, with 78 percent of Minnesotans surveyed saying they disapproved of hunting for a trophy or a mount.

An increase in trophy hunting also could lead to less private land available to most hunters, says Keith McCaffery, a senior deer research biologist with the Wisconsin DNR. He points to southwestern Wisconsin, where hunters lease more than 25 percent of private land. Each hunter pays as much as $1,000 per season to hunt private land in a part of the state nationally renowned for big-antlered deer.

"We have a tradition of access to private land in this country," McCaffery says, "and I see [the leasing of land to trophy hunters] as a loss of hunting opportunities for the average hunter."

Record-Breaking States

Regardless of their views of trophy hunting, no hunter can dispute that Minnesota and other upper Midwest states produce the most big deer in the nation. The combination of northern latitudes, fertile land, and wooded farmlands and river bottoms makes this the nation's top trophy-producing region. Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin rank, in that order, as the top four states for whitetail entries in the Boone and Crockett record book since 1984. Minnesota is number one in entries dating back to 1830.

Despite these impressive statistics, some hunters are urging deer managers to refashion deer herds to produce even more big bucks. Advocates of what is called "quality deer management" believe that Minnesota and other states could produce more trophy deer if natural resource agencies would restrict the kill of smaller bucks.

The theory, similar to that behind increasing the size of walleyes and other game fish, is biologically sound. Because most hunters want to shoot a buck, even a small one, they crop off the 2- and 4-pointers that would have eventually grown up to be 8- to 12-pointers.

"We could have some incredible trophy whitetail hunting down here if only the DNR would do something to restrict the harvest of small bucks," says Michael Sieve, a wildlife artist and big-buck management proponent who lives in Houston County.

Hunter Success Rates

But the price of producing more big deer would be fewer deer to hunt, say DNR deer managers. "We'd have to limit the number of buck hunters, have a minimum antler size, or limit the number of days that hunters could harvest bucks," says Dave Schad, DNR forest wildlife program leader. In other words, to produce more large-antlered deer, many hunters would have to forgo killing a deer some seasons. "We strongly believe that most hunters wouldn't go for that," Schad says.

As a result, the DNR plans to stay its current course, which is to manage deer to provide the highest hunter success rates possible while keeping the deer populations at goal levels.

"We've got success rates of over 40 percent, equal to those of the so-called golden years of the 1960s," says Schad. "Most hunters appear to be happy with that."

Schad points out that landowners and groups of hunters can increase the percent of trophy deer in their hunting areas by agreeing among themselves to kill fewer small bucks. He also notes that the DNR has discussed developing a pilot project to see if managing for trophy deer would work in Minnesota as it has in other states such as South Carolina. Such an experiment would be conducted at a federal refuge or other large public area where hunter access and harvest could be closely controlled. But Schad says that the DNR doesn't have money enough to do the experiment right now.

Perhaps that's not such a terrible loss for deer hunting. After all, a trophy can be any deer significant to a hunter, whether it's a doe, a forkhorn, or a 16-pointer. Ultimately, most hunters cherish the memory of the hunt more than the reminder hanging on the wall.

Whatever satisfaction hunters take in acquiring trophies, they could learn something from the deer themselves, which are apparently less attached to their bony crowns. Each winter, after putting much energy into producing these splendid accessories, male deer "jettison their debt," writes Rick Bass in his essay "Antlers." With breeding season over, battle-weary bucks need not carry the heavy antlers during the difficult winter months. And so the antlers drop off, like leaves from a tree. Bass writes, "The richness of the antlers, the extravagance of them, cannot be sustained."

Tom Dickson is a staff writer for the DNR Division of Fish and Wildlife and a frequent contributor to the Volunteer.

Growing Good Bone

That an animal can grow in just a few months something as large as a set of antlers is one of the more astonishing feats of the natural world. This new bone sprouts and branches out like an oak, reaching full maturity in a single season. It is then shed and regrown year after year.

Most deer grow symmetrical racks with an equal number of tines on each side. Asymmetrical racks might be genetic or might indicate an ailment or injury to the deer. A doe can see in the size and symmetry of antlers the strength and health of a buck, which she desires to ensure the genetic health of her young.

Besides attracting does, bucks use their antlers as protection against attacks by wolves, dogs, coyotes, and other predators. However, the primary use of antlers is as a locking mechanism to catch and hold an opponent during rutting season. In sparring matches, the deer lock antlers and push, testing strength in a whitetail equivalent of arm wrestling.

Generally, the bigger and older the buck, the bigger its antlers. A buck needs to live three to five years (less in Minnesota's fertile south and more in the forested north) to produce a large rack.

Genetics can determine the number of points and shape of the antlers. But by far the most important factor, say wildlife biologists, is nutrition.

According to wildlife biologist Valerius Geist, no one has better summed up the requirements for antler growth than Twite, the hunt master to King Edward II, who wrote in 1313: "The antler grows as the pasture, goode or otherwise."

Where the Big Guys Are

Hunters can find big bucks almost anywhere in Minnesota, but some spots are better than others. According to the 1997 edition of the Minnesota Record Book, the three counties that have produced the most trophy whitetail entries per square mile are Winona, Washington, and Houston. Other top buck-producing counties are largely in a band running from central Minnesota to the state's southeastern corner. That's where deer have a combination of high-quality food to grow their antlers and plenty of woods or forested river bottoms to escape hunting pressure.

To find big bucks, trophy-buck hunter Bill Lewno, of Forest Lake, recommends focusing on areas that have these two features: plenty of cover and limited hunting pressure. Lewno, who hunts with a bow, has taken several monstrous whitetails in Anoka County, part of the seven county Twin Cities metro area. Such semirural areas often harbor huge deer because local shooting ordinances or trespass restrictions limit hunting opportunities. Here, the hunter's first, and often biggest, challenge is to gain permission to hunt a prime parcel of woods.

Tom Dickson