Jesse Schroed­er hoists the antlers and skull he found in April on a Good­hue Coun­ty farm. The antlers score a state-record 277 3⁄8 nontypical.

Picked-up head tops 49-year-old mark

By Scott Bestul
Contributing Writer

Lake City, Minn. Jesse Schroed­er thought he was look­ing at the tines from a nice shed antler while he wan­dered his brother’s Good­hue Coun­ty farm in ear­ly April. But when Schroed­er walked in to scoop up his find, a cou­ple nice tines grew into a whole bunch of them, and those mor­phed into an mon­strous rack attached to a dead buck.

And not just any buck, but what appears to be the biggest non­typ­i­cal white­tail in the Min­neso­ta record book. Schroeder’s buck, recent­ly scored by a pan­el of vet­er­an mea­sur­ers from the Boone & Crock­ett (B&C) Club, amassed a net score of 277 3⁄8.

The Gopher State’s cur­rent non­typ­i­cal state record – a 268 5⁄8‑inch mon­ster killed by Mitch Vakoch in Nor­man Coun­ty – was tagged in 1974, just shy of a half-cen­tu­ry ago. B&C accepts found, or “picked up” heads in its record book.

Schroed­er was shed hunt­ing his brother’s 32-acre prop­er­ty on April 7 when he found the buck.

“I’d picked up some nice sheds there over the years, but noth­ing that came any­where close to this,” he said. “I spot­ted the tines and walked that way, and then I saw stuff stick­ing every­where and my walk turned into a quick lit­tle sprint, fol­lowed by a high-school girl scream when I kneeled by the buck. My shed hunt­ing was def­i­nite­ly done for that day!”

After call­ing local state Con­ser­va­tion Offi­cer Brit­tany Hauser, Schroed­er took pos­ses­sion of the rack and, not long after, word of his incred­i­ble find spread.

“I’d nev­er had an encounter with him while hunt­ing, or even a trail cam pic of the buck, though he’d obvi­ous­ly been on the prop­er­ty at times in his life,” he said.

“A friend of mine was hunt­ing the prop­er­ty one after­noon and told me he saw a buck that looked like it had a tree on its head. But as the buck approached, my brother’s wife came out­side to call her cats, and that scared the buck off. We’d heard there was a giant buck in the neigh­bor­hood and fig­ured that had to be him.”

Oth­er neigh­bors, how­ev­er, were much more famil­iar with the deer.

“After I found him, I start­ed get­ting trail cam pics and videos from hunters and landown­ers in the area,” Schroed­er said. “They were from loca­tions as far apart as five miles, but all in the same basic cor­ri­dor. One guy had a shed from the buck that he fig­ured was from when the deer was 2 1⁄2 or 3 1⁄2 years old. That shed was from 2017, so the buck was 7 or 8 years old, the best we can figure.”

Schroed­er said the buck’s car­cass was basi­cal­ly a skele­ton and revealed no clues as to cause of death.

“I did notice some of his front teeth were gone, and it looked like the jaw bone might have been frac­tured and infect­ed,” he said. “My guess is the buck got in a fight and got sick and just didn’t make it through the win­ter. We plant five or six acres of food plots every year, just to help the deer feed and win­ter well, but this win­ter was tough on the deer, with plen­ty of ice and snow and cold, which stayed around late.”

The buck was scored on June 10 by a pan­el led by vet­er­an mea­sur­er Chad Collins. Incred­i­bly, the Schroed­er buck is a main-frame 8‑point that gross-scored over 182 inch­es, with a 20 5⁄8‑inch inside spread, 23-inch main beams, and cir­cum­fer­ences bet­ter than 6 inch­es at the base. But thanks to an amaz­ing array of drop tines, kick­ers and stick­ers, the buck gained 100 inch­es of abnor­mal points, which cat­a­pult­ed its score into the “world class” category.

Assum­ing the pan­el score holds up (B&C typ­i­cal­ly reviews the scores of all top-end bucks), the Schroed­er buck could tie for the 25th spot in the B&C records of non­typ­i­cal whitetails.

With the pan­el score still fresh in his rear view, Schroed­er admits he’s still a bit awed.

“I mean, I knew the buck was huge when I found him, but I real­ly didn’t appre­ci­ate how big he was until a friend clued me in to just what I might have,” he laughed. “Sud­den­ly the 60-day
dry­ing peri­od seemed for­ev­er and I was wor­ried some­thing might hap­pen to the rack. But now that that’s done, it’s just fun to share him with oth­er peo­ple, so they can appre­ci­ate what an amaz­ing buck he was.”

The buck’s antlers will appear at next year’s Min­neso­ta Deer and Turkey Clas­sic March 8–10, 2024, at Can­ter­bury Park.