On Wednesday, November 8, 2000, Mike Beatty of Xenia, Ohio shot a tremendous non-typical whitetail buck in Greene County Ohio. The deer was recovered the next morning and immediately taken to the local headquarters of the Ohio Division of Natural Resources. The deer was tagged and Mike then had a Wildlife Officer accompany him back to the scene of the harvest to confirm and validate the legality of the hunt. The deer and the hunter are both 100% legal. May this dispel all of the false rumors that have spread around the country. What follows is an account of my involvement with the scoring of the Beatty Buck.

On Sunday November the 12th, I received a phone call from BTR scorer Brady Smith. He was in the process of trying to decipher and measure the now famous Beatty Buck from Greene County, Ohio. He asked me if I could come to his home and render assistance in the scoring of this massive rack.

I arrived at Brady’s home within thirty-five minutes and together we began to interpret and measure each of the forty scoreable points on the rack. (A scoreable point is no less than 1 full inch in length). The process took more than three hours from the time I arrived but we finally arrived at a conclusion. With all the numbers on the paper, we added and then re-added the numbers to come up with a score of 286 4/8 inches of antler. Adding the inside spread of 25 7/8” we had a Buckmasters Composite Score of
312 3/8 inches. The current record holder for a compound bow harvested whitetail deer in the irregular category (more than 10% of the total inches are non typical) is 264 5/8 inches. This rack surpassed that mark by more than 21 inches to become the new World Record Irregular Whitetail harvested with a compound bow.

The rack has now been dry scored (January 7, 2001), by a Boone & Crockett scorer and it stands, by their records, as the new World Record for any harvested deer at 304 6/8 inches net.

The antlers were mounted on a donated cape as the original hide was being tanned for a full body mount. The show mount was done by Taxidermist Rick Busse at his Wildlife Studio in Piqua, Ohio.

The mount is beginning a hectic schedule of shows about the USA, you can check out Mike’s own site for information on where he is headed next. Beatty Buck Web Site

Located around this web page are numerous thumbnails leading to photos I have taken of this tremendous buck and also a copy of the official score sheet from Buckmasters.

On February 10, I was informed that a set of sheds from a previous year had been found and were going to be available to us for scoring in the near future. I will update this page when more details are available.

Thanks for visiting
Ed Waite