TYPICAL DEER – ALLTIME RECORD

1. Poached 194-2/8 2003

On the evening of November 10, 2003, approximately 20 minutes past the end of legal hunting, two non-resident hunters were travelling on the Henderson Loop Road just north of Dryden.  A large buck ran across the road in front of the vehicle onto private property and stopped a short distance away in an open field.  The driver positioned the vehicle so that the lights would illuminate the deer while the passenger exited the vehicle, and shot the deer with one shot.  The deer ran a short distance to the treeline and died.  The hunter trespassed onto the private property and located the dead deer, before leaving the area in an effort to organize help to recover it.  The hunter returned a short time later with help and began dragging the trophy buck off the private property.  The property owner was in the vicinity and noticed some unusual activity in the snow.  The presence of the property owner had the group fleeing the property and abandoning the deer, which was neither tagged nor field dressed.

Conservation Officers were contacted and began an investigation into the incident.  The hunter and his accomplices crossed the border into the United States before the Ontario Conservation Officers could catch up with them.

Conservation Officers from Mississippi and Louisiana assisted in the investigation.

The hunter was fined a total of $4,000 for offences, including night hunting, trespassing to hunt, and abandonment of meat. He was also suspended from hunting in Ontario for two years.  The deer was forfeited to the Crown.

These penalties reflect the seriousness of the illegal activities that took place in the harvest of this trophy deer. In April 2016, it was officially panel scored as 194 2/8 typical white-tailed deer, potentially a new Ontario record.

The deer is now widely known as “The Dryden Buck”.