It makes sense that deer hunting is rebounding in Region 2 after a number of years of reduced effort brought about by low deer numbers. As hunting pressure dropped off, whitetails increased. Even though the herd has been down in recent years, the remaining deer are healthy and the does tend to be more productive. It doesn’t take long for healthy does to repopulate an area.

Healthy bucks also tend to produce bigger racks. More record-book bucks have been coming from Region 2 during recent years, and their presence attracts hunters. An antlered whitetail that 14-year-old Andrew Krebill arrowed on state land in Manistee County on Nov. 11, 2006, is a perfect example. Krebill was hunting from one of his uncle’s tree stands when he killed the deer. Andrew heard the buck coming behind him and was able to get his bow ready for action. The deer stopped in one spot for five or six minutes before finally moving into position for a shot. The 12-pointer had a drop tine on the left antler and was aged at 4 1/2 or 5 1/2 years old by a taxidermist. The antlers netted 128 5/8 inches. Andrew’s father, Paul, said his family has been hunting that area for 50 years and that is the biggest buck they have killed.

Counties in Region 3 typically produce the biggest antlered bucks for bowhunters every year in Michigan, and 2007 should not be any different. I talked with a pair of hunters from Region 3 who each arrowed trophy whitetails last fall, and they both said they either saw or heard about bucks that survived and were at least as big as the ones they killed.

Kelly Hatch was one of those bowhunters. She arrowed a non-typical 16-pointer near her home in Washtenaw County on Oct. 7, 2006. The impressive rack on her deer netted 164 1/8 inches. It was traveling with another buck that had a rack similar in size to the one she dropped. In fact, when the second deer took off running after the shot, she said she thought it was the one her arrow had connected with. The antlers were so close in size it was easy to get them confused. When Hatch watched the whitetail go out of sight 200 yards away, she was concerned about how much of a drag would be involved in recovering it. It wasn’t until after she got her husband and they found her buck 30 yards from the stand in a different direction than she watched the other buck go that she realized there had been two bucks together close to the same size. Kelly said she didn’t hear about another trophy buck taken during the remainder of hunting season from the area, so she thinks he’s still out there, and should have an even bigger rack this year.

Ken Thompson had a similar experience in Ingham County. A friend of his had been seeing a big buck on his property, so he invited Thompson to hunt there. When Thompson eventually arrowed a 21-point non-typical at 7:30 a.m. on Nov. 9, he thought that was the buck his friend had been seeing. When he showed the deer to his friend, however, he found out otherwise. The property owner had never seen the buck Thompson killed. He told Thompson the one he had been seeing had a bigger rack with much longer tines. The bowhunter is convinced the buck his friend had been seeing is definitely of Boone and Crockett proportions. He knows that one survived because his buddy saw the deer again in January after hunting seasons ended.

Of course, there was nothing wrong with the antlers of the buck that Thompson did tag. They grossed close to 180 inches and netted 167 6/8 inches, with a broken G-2. The rack had plenty of mass, with antler bases measuring 6 6/8 inches in circumference. He said the antlers weighed 7 pounds. The buck was 4 1/2 years old and had a dressed weight of 190 pounds.