A deer and shed hunter in Wisconsin recently found what may be the biggest set of whitetail antlers in Wisconsin history.
“I’ve shed hunted a lot. I’ve hunted a lot. I have many, many miles on my boots looking for sheds. And to come across this, it’s a diamond in the rough,” Nate Olsen told NBC15 News.
“The record for the biggest deer in Wisconsin ever to be found or killed is 253 inches. And he is flirting with breaking the record,” he said. “It’s been 47 years. Let’s see if he can do it.”
Nate Olsen and a friend, Travis Wuthrich, were shed hunting February 1 when they came across the dead heads of two bucks who had died with their horns locked together. It’s a relatively frequent occurrence among rutting males, and game wardens have used a variety of means to unlock the antlers, including shooting them off.
These deer weren’t fortunate enough to run into a game warden, and they died with their antlers still attached to their skulls.
When Olsen saw the 23-point rack, he was so surprised he couldn’t speak. Wuthrich recalls that Olsen turned to say something to him when Olsen noticed the antlers under a tree.
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“He freezes and does that (points), and so I come around, and as soon as I seen it, I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s two huge bucks.’ And then as I started looking it over, I realized, ‘Nate, oh my God.’ This is the biggest deer I’ve ever seen in my life, undoubtedly. It’s insane,” Wuthrich told the GazetteXtra.
Another of Olsen’s friends, Mike Hackett, had been tracking the same deer for three years on his trail cam.
The current Wisconsin record-holder is a 30-point Buffalo County buck killed in 1973 that scored B&C 253. Olsen believes his buck will beat that record, and GazetteXtra reports that a Wisconsin Buck & Bear Club representative agreed with Olsen’s assessment.
The official measurement will be taken the first week of April at the Wisconsin Field & Stream Deer and Turkey Expo in Madison.
Olsen wishes he had had the chance to shoot the buck himself, but is nonetheless happy with the result.
“I don’t know if my arrow would have been able to stay on my rest. If I would have been able to shoot it, I don’t think I would have been getting out of the tree stand too easily. I would have been calling someone up there saying, ‘Carry me out of here, please,’” Olsen told NBC15 News.
The buck was found just south of a town called Orfordville in southern Wisconsin.