On Monday I was home for lunch and was on my way back to the office when I saw him. The ol' boy was visiting with one of his girlfriends, who was one of our neighborhood Does... She was a regular brown deer. When she saw me stop, she took off and left Romeo standing there.
Fortunately I had my camera and long lens ready. I stopped, backed up until I saw him and then parked and shut the engine off. Romeo cooperated and stood still and struck multiple poses for about 5 minutes while I snapped as many images as I could. At the end of the session, he just walked away and did not seem to be in a hurry at all.
When I examined all of my images I believe the deer has at least 14 points. The rack is referred to as being "Palmated". Several people I have shown the images to thought this was a Moose initially.
Since Monday he has not been seen in the neighborhood that I am aware of. I have had my trail cam out there all week and the only luck with that was to have a small spike buck in the camera. This guy was in the Rut and his neck is very swollen. I presume he moved back towards his stomping grounds over along Company Lake Road where he was born on Shuman's farm. There is supposed to be another one that is a brother that has a normal rack that has been reported to be 12 points. A couple friends have seen this feller and one provided images from a trail cam of this deer with his rack in full white colored velvet.
This is the largest living whitetail deer that I have ever seen. I feel very lucky to have been able to have the opportunity to take these images. I have shared these images with many and offered them to a couple opf magazines. I spoke with Editor of Lake Superior Magazine today in Duluth and she is very interested. I'll send in the images and see what happens.
