Freak Show Bucks

Wow, should I feel honored 2 of my bucks made it into the article??? People like this need to actually come to a farm or go to a ranch to see what it's all about, not post 2nd hand knowledge. For their sake I REALLY hope that they're vegans because they might pass out if they found out what they do to those poor cows and chickens that feed them breakfast, lunch and dinner. And if they aren't, then I can call them hypocrites...

I think we should not let them take pics of our bucks to use in there magazines.

that mutha &$%#@} doesn't know what he is talking about

Like we specifically tried to raise a deer with those particular antlers. Deer grow antlers a certain way for whatever reason. We all try to grow big deer and sometimes it just turns out the way Ballistic did - no funny business, just the way they grew!

There should be no such thing as bad publicity.

It's a double edged sword which can defend & attack.How will the industry manage this & future publications?

How acceptable are your practices to Mr & Mrs average ?

There are no secrets,hiding practices or trying to stop photos wont work.

What are your codes of practice?

How will/do you deal with cranium seperation ? Will breeders cull these animals ?

Are animals really tiped into reserves 3 days before they are hunted,or do they grow their head in the enclosure ?

What is the minimum sise of an enclosure? Why? How did you determine this?

Are any deer farmers breeding/ restoring the original sub species?

Why is it acceptable for breeders to describe their deer as "monsters"?

How do you engage with hunters? Are you running caping,butchering,hunting,etc workshops,for hunting orgs?

How do you measure & promote the benefits you provivde to the hunting industry & general public?(dont concentrate on $$)



These issues are common througout the deer industry world wide.



Cheers Sharkey



PS. Better to self regulate than have legislation forced upon you. Been there,you dont want that.

I said it before and its showing again.The more we breed for inches the more the whitetail no longer looks like the majestic animal it was made to be.We will someday breed ourselves into trouble.You will never change some peoples view on farm deer but the less they look like a deer just gives them more to fight with.

WOW, no more Outdoor Life mag in this house, if they can see the impact deer farming has to the economy then they are blind. It is sad that they view it this way but I guess to each their own and in my case, my opinion is to not buy Outdoor Life anymore..

I see allot of you commenting here but what I have not seen is is if you go to hunting whitetails you will see a story about a hunter how strive for yrs to manage his bucks during hunting season and if you read it just what he is wining about long tines this guy harvested a 4 to 5 yr old with 121/4 inch tines well if this was a wild deer as they try and say then what is he crying about???

Pretty sure if he saw Ballistic out of the fence he would be first one pulling the trigger. He may as well write and article about Tony Lovstuen's Iowa non-typical being a freak show buck, the buck aparently didn't read the script on what he was "supposed" to look like. These ***** know it all writers are why I can't even pick up a magazine anymore. All they do is rewrite some other BS some other writer or over educated biologist dreamed up out of fake study they did in college trying to make something simple into something complex so they could get a good grade. Most of these idiots don't even spend anytime in the real outdoors. I've hosted numerous outdoor writers over the years and maybe 1 in 10 has a clue about wildlife or any kind of management and most would never listen to a simple landowner, farmer, rancher or outfitter who's life depends on observing what really happens in nature. They'd rather take it from someone who has spent there whole life in a classroom and now has a gov't job as a biologist telling us what we need to do different to be better managers. The only difference is he gets paid WELL even if his information is incorrect but it must be right because he "wrote" about it. Give me a break. I watch these jokers on the QDMA show telling everyone how they need to let the deer mature and get older and the first thing they all do is shoot a little 2 or 3 yr old buck on camera and spout off that the deer we all know is probably 2-3 is a mature 5-6 yr old that needed to be culled to improve the genetics, but they are "biologists" and writers. A whole lotta stupid these days getting wrote about and not many people using there own brains to think about some of this stuff, they really need to figure it out for themselves what works and what really makes sense.

If a deer grew antlers that "just turned out that way"(a mutation) & you put him over does,& then breed for that,then you are specifically trying to raise deer with those particular antlers.Are you not?



Deer are not considered the same as chickens & cows.Deer are a game species & evoke much more emotion.This is that double edged sword as it allows us to sell them for more than a price per lb,but it requires us to present them differently to other livestock.



Cheers Sharkey

Just got that what a joke, they should fire him for not getting all the facts. I dont think he'd that that buck go in the woods, dont want that deer breeding for sure

Those type of deer probably get antler infection easier .Mother natures way of making them look the way they are intended to look in her eyes. A theory .

"Those type of deer probably get antler infection easier .Mother natures way of making them look the way they are intended to look in her eyes. A theory ."





The only reason whitetail deer have gotten so big so fast is that it was already in their DNA. Yes, that is correct they have already been to this point. I don't know when and I don't know how, but this is not the first time there has been bucks with this kind of antlers.

It took thousands of years to change cattle, pigs, dogs..ect into what they are now through domestic breeding. It's because breeding for an extreme, whether it be size, shape, color..ect takes hundreds of generations to actually put something new into a species....unless it's already in the genes. Then it's just a matter of breeding deer with large antlers to deer with larger antlers and guess what it comes back out quick.

Quickness to change is what makes whitetail deer so adaptable. Whitetail deer are a colonizing species. That means if there is a disturbance (fire, tornado, hurricane, earthquake they are there first taking advantage of the new shoots and regrowing habitat. That is why they take to edges so well. As most of you know something (disease, dogs...ect) might kill 95% of a herd, but for some reason there is always a few that survive. That is because of a whitetail's genetic diversity. They survive and thrive in new settings.

Sometime in the past huge antlers were beneficial to the species. Perhaps in a subspecies in an open prairie environment (before mule deer took over).

What proof do I have?? Huge whitetail bucks pop up randomly throughout North American "Hole in the horn, Missouri monarch,..ect) Where does that come from?? Just random mutations?

Bred a huge buck (mutant) to a bunch of random does. Why do you get 1-2 huge bucks out of the bunch? If the mutation was a dominant gene all of the bucks would be huge. If it was codominant none of the bucks would be as big as the father, but they would all be larger than normal. If the mutation was a recessive gene none of them would be huge....unless the does have it as well??? If it's in the doe herd it's been passed down from past bucks. PAST BUCKS........WHOA ...yeah we aren't creating anything new.

Therefore maybe they are looking the way mother nature intended after all....

bull sh//. A wild deer can't run from preditors if it cant hold it head up. you get them that big by caring for them in pens.

I believe this: These extra large deer are NOT ''mother nature'' made deer. Whether you look at these deer as good, bad, or indifferent, or whatever, they ARE ''man made''...period...cut and dried!!!!

It was said ''this is all driven by money''...What business ISN'T driven by money??? Certainly the magazine business is. That guy wrote that article KNOWING it would sell magazines...hence making money.

Whether one agrees with making ''tumor heads'' or not, if there is a market for them and people are making money on them...I say go for it. I personally like and appreciate the typical look, but that's me.

Like it has been said, we have bred domestics for years to develope certain characteristics to better serve us at our dining room table, ie better formed and MORE muscled cattle, longer pigs so as to have MORE pork chops, etc etc, and all this breeding was fueled by MONEY.

I do believe that when these big bucks suffer from all this extra weight and have to be sawed early, we then have to step back and ask ourselves if we have crossed the line. God has given us animals for our use, but also expects good stewardship over them.

Even though I like my typical deer, I don't believe I'll be picking up an Outdoor Life anytime soon.

We are making our own problems when we breed for more inches. I have many guys that know i raise deer tell me that they are kinda on the fence on deer farming and high fence hunting but when they see some of these deer that have lost what a deer has been made to look like they say that is what sets them over the line.I believe there will come a time and from what i hear might be here now is that preserves will have no use for these non looking whitetails.For years now the big talk was breed for inches and now there are alot of bucks standing in pens for sale because yes they have inches but no they dont look like deer!!!

Every record book deer is a freak of nature - because it doesn't occur regularly. Having been in the hunting business for over 15 years we can tell you that one person's freak is the next guy's dream buck.



I find it hard to believe that deerfarmers aren't breeding for inches, since no one says I'm trying to breed small antlered deer. We are maximizing their genetic potential. What I don't like are the comments about steriods etc. suggesting we are doing something under the table. I can guarantee you we have not done anything like that. Ballistic is a cross of HyJax and Redoy Ruger doe - no one could have guessed this particular result. While both of those deer were great deer they didn't approach anything close to what Ballistic produced. The other thing is that he CAN carry this rack and is carrying it right now. He is shedding his velvet as we speak so is in hard antler.

Four Seasons Whitetails said:

We are making our own problems when we breed for more inches. I have many guys that know i raise deer tell me that they are kinda on the fence on deer farming and high fence hunting but when they see some of these deer that have lost what a deer has been made to look like they say that is what sets them over the line.I believe there will come a time and from what i hear might be here now is that preserves will have no use for these non looking whitetails.For years now the big talk was breed for inches and now there are alot of bucks standing in pens for sale because yes they have inches but no they dont look like deer!!!

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What should they breed for? 100"-150" deer that are 16"-17" wide (don't want them to wide, might look like a freak) . How big is to big? How how much non typical is to much?

Wild Rivers Whitetails said:

Every record book deer is a freak of nature - because it doesn't occur regularly. Having been in the hunting business for over 15 years we can tell you that one person's freak is the next guy's dream buck.

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Gary, you are correct.



A couple years ago I had a couple piebald deer that I was going to cull out of my herd. I contacted Cabela's to see about donating them for mounts to my local store. They were very animate about the fact they they wanting nothing to do with piebald or albino deer. They were oddities and freaks and would not display them in their stores. My reply was that ALL of the bucks displayed in their store are freaks. Piebalds and albino's occur more often in the wild than those huge monster state record bucks that are displayed all over the store.



In our Cabela's store here in WV, the DNR donated huge racks from bucks that were shot by convicted poachers (these racks were evidence in the court cases). So now they have taken illegally shot bucks and publicised them. These poachers can go to Cabela's and see their buck on display. Now, that is a slap in the face to all hunters !!



Back to the original issue. No one is held responsible for their reporting anymore. The fact don't have to be correct, and no one does anything about it. Here in our local newspaper there is a guy the writes a hunting and fishing column in every Sunday edition. He has made several comments over the years about deer farmers and that he doesn't understand what we do or why we do it. NOW, he has known me all my life. He was at my house about 10 years ago when I first got started in deer farming. BUT, he has never one time called me to interview me or do research for his column. He isn't a reporter. Much like a lot of these guys, he is stating his opinion, not any facts that took real investigation to find.