We know. When we first saw the photos of this buck, we wondered the same thing some of you may be thinking now: Is this thing for real? The buck is certainly turning heads—and raising some eyebrows—on the internet. But based on our conversation with the hunter and the trail-cam video and additional photos below, it seems like the buck is both for real and one of the widest whitetail we've every profiled.
Tanner Stay, of Iowa, took the giant whitetail during an evening archery hunt in Monroe County, Missouri earlier this week, on September 25. He unofficially measured its wide, typical rack at just over 185 inches.
“I found this area last year, and I’ll put it up against anywhere I’ve been in the world for hunting. The genetics are unbelievable,” Stay tells F&S. “I have a good buddy with a farm down there, and he gave me permission to hunt this deer off of it.”
Stay says he helps landowner Ben Carpenter set trail cameras, plant and maintain food plots, and pattern deer in exchange for hunting access. Last year, Carpenter killed an enormous 230-inch nontypical on the property with Stays help. Then, this summer, Stay set up on a turnip plot in the middle of a soybean field that drew in one of the biggest typicals he’s ever seen.
“We had plenty of nighttime photos and video of him in that plot,” he says. “So we set up a box blind. I knew that if I put in my time in he would show.”
Stay says the biggest challenge he faced during his off season scouting of the deer was keeping the turnip plot alive. “The drought has been terrible,” he says. “We had to keep the plot watered with a custom watering rig in order to keep this deer around.”
Around 4 p.m. on September 25, with a cold front moving in from the northwest, Stay climbed into the box blind with his cameraman Tristin William. Together with his brother Jesse, Stay runs a Youtube channel called Stay Grounded TV. “I had a 170-inch buck show up first, but I passed on him,” Stay says. “Then this deer showed up. The two bucks circled each other about three times before the wide 10-point ran the 170 deer off.”
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By then it was approaching last light, Stay says, and he needed to seal the deal or the buck could be gone for good. “I shot him from about 70 yards out while he was eating the turnips,” he says. “It was a heart shot. He didn’t run more than 50 yards before he dropped."
Stay says he measured the buck back at his truck after the hunt and came up with an unofficial green score of 185 and 5/8 inches. "He had 29-inch main beams and 25 inches of width," he says. "I think he’s gonna go number one for typical 10-point in the state.”
