The Boone & Crockett Club has been keeping meticulous records of the continent’s most impressive big game animals for more than a century. In that time, thousands of mulie bucks have made the books, but the top five spots for either the typical or non-typical category are rarely touched. One of the oldest entries dates to the turn of the century, for example, and the most recent top-five record book buck is still three decades old.
The minimum score for entry into the B&C books is 180 for a typical mule deer and 215 for a non-typical. But if you want to break into the top 5 you’ll need to bag a typical measuring at least 216—or a non-typical that surpasses the 324-inch mark . Good luck with that, but in the meantime you can at least read up on the current record book bucks below.
Typical
1. The Doug Burris Buck Jr. Buck
Doug Burris traveled from San Antonio, Texas to hunt mulies in Colorado’s San Juan National Forest in 1972 and ended up killing what is still the number one typical mule deer in the B&C books. According to lore, he rattled in six good bucks that day before stalking through a gambel oak thicket to shoot the 226 4/8 inch beauty pictured below. Today, the mount can be viewed at a Cabellas store in Delores County, Colorado.
2. The Svenson Buck
Little is known about this buck or the hunter who shot it. But we do know that his name was Lars Svenson, and he harvested the iconic mulie buck with a .32 cailber rifle in 1948, somewhere near the Saskatchewan River. Lars apparently had no interest in getting it scored. Thankfully, his grandson did. The official B&C score is 214 4/6 inches. The rest is a mystery.
3. The Hoback Buck
The Hoback Buck was killed in a Canyon south of Jackson Hole, Wyoming in 1925. B&C says that whoever shot it was a meat hunter, completely unconcerned with the massive antlers atop the buck’s head.
Thankfully, an unnamed ranch hand found and saved the buck’s discarded rack, which hung on the wall of a popular Jackson Hole saloon for years before B&C got ahold of it and issued it a score of 217 inches. That score stood as number one until the aforementioned Burris buck came along in 1972. Today, the Hoback Buck’s horns are hanging for all to see in the Jackson Hole Museum.
4. Arizona Cougar-Killed Dead Head
The most recent mule deer in our top-ten list wasn’t taken by a human hunter, and it’s the only Arizona mulie to ever make B&C’s top-ten typical list. The buck’s head was picked up in 1994 by Steven Stayner, who was searching for deer along the rimrock of Cococino County at the time. According to B&C, it was killed by a lion, but its rack was still in impeccable shape when Stayner found it. With an official score of 216 6/8, it is currently on display at Johnny Morris’ Wonders of Wildlife National Museum and Aquarium in Springfield, Missouri.
5. Tie—The Ray Talbot and Gary L. Alberston Bucks
Idaho’s lone top-ten mulie was shot by the sheriff of Franklin County in 1961. Ray Talbot reportedly killed the buck near Worm Creek. Since then, it’s been showcased at an Idaho Fish and Game office in Boise, the Boone & Crockett headquarters in Cody, Wyoming, and at the Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
Little is known about the Gary Alberston buck, except that it was killed in Uinta County, Wyoming one year before Talbot got his Idaho record. Both racks score exactly 215 5/8 inches.
Non-Typical
1. The Broder Buck
Ed Broder shot his record-setting buck while hunting near Edmonton, Alberta in the fall of 1926. According to Boone & Crockett, he drove a Model T Ford to the terminus of a rural road and then hired a horse and sleigh to take him to a hunting camp on the south shore of Chip Lake.
He hiked out of the camp he was sharing with two friends at 1 o,clock in the afternoon, following deer tracks and toting a .32 Winchester Special. When he saw the buck pictured below, he trained the rifle on its spine and dropped it with a single shot.
Decades later, one of Broder’s sons sold the famous rack to an antler collector, unbeknownst to his siblings. The 355 2/8 inch rack brought six figures, but Don Broder spent six days in jail for selling it without permission from his fellow heirs.
2. 339-Inch Giant Taken by Unknown Hunter
Information about the hunt that took this incredible mulie buck is speculative at best. According to Boone & Crockett, the mount was given as a gift to a lieutenant governor of British Columbia who served from 1892 to 1897, and the buck might have been killed by a Native American hunter with a bow in the Okanagan Valley.
It wasn’t scored by B&C judges until 1955, after spending time on display at the International Hunting Exhibition in Vienna, Austria. With a combined 47 points (24 on the right side and 23 on the left), it’s the second-biggest non-typical mulie of all time.
3. The Hunsaker Buck
Utah’s Hunsaker buck may sport the gnarliest and most unique set of antlers ever grown by a North American cervid. It was taken in 1943 in Box Elder, County by Alton Hunsaker, who was hunting from horseback in Baldhead Canyon near the state’s southwest corner. Like Ed Broder, Hunsaker took his B&C record with a trusty .32 Winchester Special. At 330 and 1/8 inches, it’s still the largest ever recorded in Beehive State history—and the number 3 non-typical mulie buck of all time.
4. The Fauria Buck
Hunter Clifton Fauria shot this non-typical giant with a .270 in Nye County, Nevada in 1955, but he died a year later and it wasn’t measured by Boone & Crockett until 1991. All told, it has 46 scorable points—22 on one side and 24 on the other—which landed it a 325 1/8 inch score. It reportedly weighed in at 300 pounds after Fauria shot it in the Stoneberger Basin—which lies in Austin-Tonopah Ranger District near Austin, Nevada. It’s still the biggest mulie ever taken in Nevada.
5. The Murphy Buck
Arizona’s Kaibab Plateau is a legendary mule deer destination, and the so-called Murphy buck only adds to the lore. In fact, five of the top 10 Arizona non-typicals were taken on the Kaibab. William L. Murphy shot his on November 14, 1943, and the massive rack stayed under the radar for 30 years before his son-in-law finally sent it in to B&C for scoring. The deer had an astonishing 43 and 4/8-inch inside spread and scored 324 and 1/8.
THE 1871 CLUB
