Year of the Non-Typical Velvet Bucks
The early archery mule deer season for 2005 is turning to be down right spectacular. Last year it was definitely the year of the record typical velvet mule deer as a handful of record book archery bucks were taken in Nevada, Colorado and Saskatchewan. Heading the pack was Greg Krogh’s Nevada buck that scores 202 3/8 net typical and is the new #2 all time velvet typical mule deer. All three of the aforementioned bucks were featured in our April/May 2005 “Best of 2004″ issue of Hunting Illustrated.
The tide has turned to the non-typical bucks this year and three world class velvet mule deer have been taken. Randy Ulmer knocked down once again another trophy buck with his bow in Nevada. The buck is 32 1/2 inches wide with a green score pushing 240 plus.
A lot of excitement happened here in Utah when the “General” went down. This buck has been heavily pursued and last fall almost went down with the Governor’s tag, but to no avail. The great buck came in better than ever for 2005 and early measurements could put the buck pushing the 250 gross mark! Definitely a state record contender. Time will tell in the coming weeks as we wait the official drying time and score. The current state record is held by Casey Glover with his awesome 40 inch wide 235 7/8 buck taken in 1999.
You would think that would be enough to satisfy the mule deer nut. To top it off, there is a potential world record velvet non-typical mule deer taken in the high country of Colorado. The kill shots of this buck are nothing more than spectacular. The buck has been green scored and has the potential of becoming the new world record velvet archery buck for Pope & Young. The buck is pushing 38 inches wide and scores 273 gross and 267 net. The current world record velvet buck scores 264 6/8 net P&Y and was taken by Bruce Felker in Arizona during the 1993 season. Pope & Young does not have an official world record category for velvet bucks and require them to be stripped of their velvet if they are going to be in contention for a classification of ‘world record’. However, there is a velvet category and Bruce Felker is the largest velvet non-typical on record.
Once again we will wait and see how all of the early success of these hunters pan out. I will keep you posted…
UPDATE! There is word of a possible 274 velvet archery mule deer being taken in Saskatchewan. We are working on trying to get some more details. The buck is very impressive and could challenge the Colorado buck taken by Jed Lowe (mentioned above) as the largest velvet non-typical archery buck. See this updated post about this buck
3 comments September 21st, 2005
