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Claim: Photographs shows a 412-lb. deer killed in Nebraska.
Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2006]
Origins: Three common characteristics of just about every set of Internet-circulated photos purporting to document someone's having killed a very large (if not the largest) example of a particular species are:
Some readers have been kind enough to send me photos of the 412-pound buck from Nebraska that is making the rounds on the internet.
And a Toledo Blade columnist suggested the photographs were outright fakes:
It's a big deer, to be sure, but it is not 412 pounds or anywhere close. Camera angles and advantageous poses make the buck appear to be much larger than it is. I contacted Kit Hams at the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission and he said their staff has seen this photo many times. Hams doubts its authenticity, for the same reasons I do. He said he was told the hunter was from Truman, Arkansas. The commission came up with a name, but was unable to identify that person as a permit holder in Nebraska. A guy kills the biggest, fattest whitetail almost anyone has ever heard of and his name isn't plastered all over the country? Not very likely. Hams said he believes the biggest deer he's ever checked in his state weighed in about 250 pounds field dressed. That would be a shade over 300 on the hoof, and that is a very, very big deer.
Call it a cabin-fever buck — the photographs of a supposed 412-pound white-tailed buck deer circulating among e-mails of late, that is.
In January 2006, Dennis Anderson of the Minneapolis Star Tribune wrote a column expressing skepticism about these photos similar to that contained in the newspaper articles excerpted above. A few weeks later Anderson reported that he had been contacted by an
Arkansas resident named Stan Whitt, who said that he had killed the deer while bow hunting on a Nebraska Indian reservation in The thing, in a classic bowhunting "success" pose with hunter and buddies, is so big that it pushes the envelope of credibility to the breaking point. It could simply be a dead-of-winter-and-there-ain't-no-ice-fishin' prank. It could be the clever work of photo-doctoring, which is so easy to do these days, even on a PC at home. A copy will not be printed with this column simply because it could encourage too many viewers of the photo to jump to conclusions.
Whitt says he was hunting on the reservation last November with three friends from Arkansas. He says he and his friends hunt with bows only and
However, the true size of the deer is questionable and unconfirmable. Whitt admitted that the animal was "somewhat bloated" by the time they found it the following day, and that he did not actually have it weighed. Instead, he took the deer to the reservation wildlife office, where its live weight was estimated at He shot the deer on a Saturday morning as it moved from water to a bedding area, Whitt said. "I killed him at five paces," he said, from a portable stand about 25 feet high in a tree. Whitt said he had to hold his bowstring (he shoots a Mathews bow) back 10 minutes while the deer approached. He said he shot the deer virtually straight down, the shot striking behind the left shoulder and 3 inches from the spine. His arrow carried a 100-grain Simmons broadhead. The animal disappeared in the far distance, Whitt said, losing the arrow as he ran. Four hours later, Whitt began his search for the deer. He said he looked alone until dark without finding the animal. The next morning one of his friends joined the search, as well as a reservation game warden and another man. Whitt said his friend found the deer in a draw or ravine about noon that day, a Sunday. Last updated: 10 November 2006 This material may not be reproduced without permission. snopes and the snopes.com logo are registered service marks of snopes.com.  Sources:
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