Whitetail365: The Deer Hunting Blog From Field & Stream

I’m messing with trail cameras again. There are, as we all know, folks who run a circuit of scouting cams like some men run trap lines. I’ll admit I’ve never been one of them, and I can’t really explain why. Laziness is my best guess. Cameras got big about a decade ago, and my wife and I had our hands full with newborn twins. Maybe I didn’t want to add one more thing to my already-heaping plate? I honestly can’t remember.

I know this much: I have never counted myself in the crowd that says cameras are unethical or, somehow, cheating. Snapping a buck’s picture is like finding one piece of a thousand-part puzzle, not a visual slam dunk that puts your tag on him. And as for a scout cam spooking a buck, I have no doubt of that possibility and, indeed, have seen it happen. But will that event blow him out of his core area? Doubtful, unless you place the thing in a sensitive area (for the buck, of course) and you’re running in there every other day and mucking about.

But for me there has never been any doubt that candid shots of whitetails are simply cool. So I decided to get a little more serious this summer about getting some. I read up on some tactics. Talked to some scout-cam freaks and took notes. And then I started sticking cameras out. I made a few dumb mistakes and corrected them. Took some neat photos of does, fawns and young bucks. And then, this week, the buck below. I nicknamed him Hollywood because he posed in front of my StealthCam six times and gave me multiple views of his antlers. Of course he’s no world-beater, but for my neighborhood he’s awful handsome. And know what? On a hot summer day, with bow season 49 long days away, it just makes me happy knowing he’s out there. Even if I never see him again…

Could the long-standing belief that albino whitetails are genetically inferior be an old wive’s tale? This week, I had a chat with friend Tom Indrebo that has me rethinking that theory. Indrebo, who owns the well-known “Bluff Country Outfitters” in Buffalo County, Wisconsin, has seen his share of white deer over the last two decades. In addition to trophy bucks, Western Wisconsin is famous for its population of albinos. At one point, the game manager there told me he knew of 18 different albinos in his area.

Indrebo and his son Shane have taken particular interest in the huge albino buck pictured above. Photographed numerous times by Shane (shaneindrebo.com), a professional photographer specializing in wildlife and nature, this buck is now 8-1/2 years old. “His shed antlers are regularly found, and have gross-scored over 170” each of the last four seasons,” Shane says. “Last year’s set—a 12-point typical with one sticker—would have grossed in the 190’s. I’ve photographed and filmed the buck frequently, and body-wise he’s larger than any brown deer I’ve seen.”

Tom’s experience with this and other white deer have him wondering about the old “genetically inferior” argument. “Sure, we’ve seen some of these bucks get sick and sometimes die, but invariably it’s when they’re 6, 7, 8 years old or above,” Tom says. “Who knows if the same thing would’ve happened to a brown deer? It’s hard to tell, because the brown deer almost never get that old; they always get shot first (albino deer are protected in Wisconsin).”

So what are your thoughts? Does this look like a whitetail suffering from a poor dip in the gene pool? And please correct me if you know otherwise, but I’d hazard a guess that this may be the largest walking white deer ever photographed.

My truck was at the end of the driveway when we spotted the deer. It was laying in a little square of timber—fifty yards wide, the same distance deep—just beyond my mailbox. “Oh,” I said to my hunting pal Mark, “someone hit a doe and she died right there.” But when we walked toward the “roadkill,” the deer was not only antlerless, but headless as well.

In an instant I knew the deer we were approaching. In the weeks prior, most of my neighbors had seen a giant 10-point feeding and chasing does in the field across from my home. While there are always one or two decent bucks in the area, this deer was special, a monarch that was making himself visible and getting folks pretty excited. I had high hopes that one of the neighbors (or of course, me or my dad) would get a shot at him. I called the warden out to investigate, but they never were able to nail the poachers who shot the buck with a small-caliber rifle.

A few years ago, I’d have been tempted to think the buck was shot by a pro; someone who could benefit financially from killing a trophy buck. But the more I read, the less I believe that. Many of the top poaching busts made in this region lately have basically amounted to the thrill-killing scenario described in the news account preceding this blog. These cases seem to play out in similar fashion; a local (often a kid or group of kids) shoots a deer from the vehicle. They get away with it once, then twice, then…Well, they get hooked. Pretty soon they’re out there all the time, killing stuff off the road. Sometimes they take a head, sometimes not.

Unfortunately I’ve read about several cases like this, including an Iowa man whom wardens caught with over 40 deer heads in a shed, and a group of Wisconsin teenagers who shot a pair of twin albino fawns and left them lay. Is this scenario playing out in other areas of the country? Or are the poachers finding a way to market their deer? And perhaps most important; is there anything we can do to stop this disturbing waste of wildlife? I’m anxious to hear your thoughts.