Normally, a 150-inch 9-point taken from the Big Black River bottoms of Hinds County would not get a lot of attention, but, then, nothing about Wil Moore’s buck is normal.
For starters, there’s its weight.
“We weighed it that day (Nov. 28) and it was between 150 and 151 pounds, and the biologist aged it at 4½ years,” said Moore, 24. “Normally, our mature bucks will average anywhere from 195 to 215 pounds, and it’s not uncommon to have one go 225 or 230.
“Heck, our mature does will average close to 150, and to be honest, this buck looked more like a doe. It had narrow hips and a small neck. The first few times we saw it we actually thought it was a young, immature buck that just had a big rack.”
It’s a 150-pound, 150-inch buck, but that’s not the end of the oddities.
Second, there’s its body size.
“It’s not just lightweight, it’s just small,” said Barry Biggers, a member of the Bogue Falia Hunting Club where it was killed. “When we put him on the skinning rack, and winched it up, it came completely off the floor and we still had nearly two feet of cable left. Normally, we struggle to get a mature buck clear of the floor for a true weight. We sometimes have to tie it up to get the nose and antlers clear.”
And, third, after considering its weight and size, there’s its amazing rack.
Biologist Chad Dacus, the deer program coordinator and assistant chief of wildlife for the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, grossed it at 150 6/8 with a net of 138 1/8 inches.
“It’s a beautiful rack,” Dacus said. “The body size certainly didn’t affect its antler growth. It’s just one of those weird deals we see from time to time and really have no way to know exactly what happened.”
Dacus’ score sheet includes the one atypical sticker point off the left G2 that measures 4 3/8 inches. The main frame 8 has main beams measuring 21 inches and change, and the G2s go 11 2/8 (R) and 13 (L) inches. The brow tines were both just a hair under 7 inches. The circumferences are respectable, 6 (R) and 5 5/8 (L) inches.
And, lastly, there’s a matter of antler density.
“They felt weird,” Dacus said. “They were real light and when you thump them, they sound hollow. They felt to me like they were not as dense, not as solid as a normal mature buck. There’s one point that almost looks like it’s burned off, probably broken, and when you look down in it, it doesn’t look right, doesn’t look solid.
“Normally, when you see antlers like that, you know hollow or lightweight, you would find evidence of disease, like blue tongue, or some kind of stress during antler growth cycles. But there was no evidence of either one. Bottom line, it just appears to be one of those short deer we hear talk about.”
Huh?
“You know, old timers talk about long deer and short deer, especially around swamps like the Big Black,” Dacus said. “It’s like we have some remnants of our native Mississippi swamp deer (the short deer) still hanging around from the original population, up and down that river.
“Personally, I’ve seen a couple of other examples of short deer. Two years ago, just down the Big Black a few miles at another club, I scored a 150-inch buck that weighed 135 pounds. And I actually shot a doe in the Big Black bottoms I aged at 5 years that weighed 90 pounds. A mature doe in that area normally would average 140 or 150.”
There could be another explanation for the “short deer” phenomena. In the early- to mid-20th century, state wildlife officials went through an extensive restocking program.
“We got a lot of deer from south Texas and from Mexico,” Dacus said, explaining that those areas are known for producing odd antler (big) to body (small) ratios. “We also got some deer from the upper Midwest and from Virginia. We got them from several sources.”
Could it be that there are bloodlines, such as Mexico deer, still out there that have remained pure in an area?
The odds would be ridiculous, but no worse than that of a pure “Mississippi swamp” deer bloodline surviving with so many gene pools existing in the state’s herd.
None of Bogue Falia’s members have ever reported sightings of deer with similar proportions. The 150-inch buck is the club’s biggest in its eight-year history, but by far is the smallest of its harvested mature bucks.
“When I shot that buck, there was also an immature 7-point in the field messing with does, and it was noticeably bigger, about 170 to 175 pounds,” Moore said. “The mature does in the field were bigger than the 9-point.”
According to Moore and Biggers, this buck had an established home range and rarely, if ever, left it. It was always seen, both by naked eye and by trail cams, within 100 yards of where it died.
“My dad Hal was the first one to see it, before last season,” Moore said. “He was over there bushhogging some lanes for duck hunting, basically cutting sage grass in an oak flat along a creek channel. Dad almost ran over the buck in the grass, nearly nudged him. He had a good rack then and we posted cameras hoping to get pictures, which we did, almost immediately.
“This year, we didn’t get any preseason photos of him, but one day during the early doe-only primitive weapon season, a friend and I went to that area to try and film him shooting a doe with a .45-70. We got to the stand and realized we’d left the camera in the truck so we just set up and watched.”
Moore said the food plot, planted in the waterfowl lanes cut by his dad the year before, quickly became active.
“A bunch of does walked out and we were watching them,” he said. “Then, boom, he pops out. The small buck with the big antlers just walked right out in the food plot. We sat there and watched him. The next day, we went in and hung more cameras in the area and got pictures.”
Up to that point, there was never any serious consideration given to killing the buck. Due to its small body, they felt he was immature and would certainly get bigger.
“Then we showed the pictures to (Chad Dacus) and he told us that, based on antlers, this was indeed a mature buck, at least 4½ years and maybe 5 or more, so we immediately put him on the hit list of bucks we’d try to shoot,” Moore said. “I know some of the guys who hunt around there, and believe me, with a rack like that, they’d have shot him without ever considering its age. So when Chad said he was 4½ we started hunting him.”
Hal Moore got the first chance a few days before his son killed it, but failed to get a shot. The story is that mid-hunt, he decided to change stands and walked around the buck to reach the same stand from which Wil Moore would eventually make the kill shot.
“Hal climbed up, and then heard a deer moving in a thicket near the food plot,” Biggers said. “He didn’t immediately get his gun up, and by the time he realized it was ‘The Buck’ the wind shifted and the buck walked off.”
A few days later, Wil Moore was back in the same stand.
“I was in a 14- or 15-foot double ladder stand, on the food plot on the edge of the river between where two creeks meet the river,” he said. “It’s only a small food plot, long but only about three or four bush-hog lanes wide. There were several deer in the field, including the young 7-point messing with a doe, and he walked out and started eating grass. I watched him for about five minutes and then shot him at 55 yards.
“That whole time I watched him, I kept thinking about its size. He looked healthy, and I kept thinking he looked more like a doe. Now, I guess he actually looked more like a shrunken version of a big buck.”
Yep, complete with a trophy-sized set of antlers.
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