A 207 7/8-Inch Whitetail Rack Was Hiding in a Basement for Decades. Now It’s Officially the Second Biggest Buck of All Time

On a late November afternoon in 1991, Sam Aiuppa climbed into a stand and dropped a slug into his Remington 870. He had spent most of the day hunting pheasants near his home in Lasalle County, Illinois with that same shotgun, and he told Rack Magazine, “I wasn’t that much of a deer hunter.”

After just 40 minutes in the stand, a 207 7/8-inch whitetail cruised beneath him. The deer was a main-frame 10-pointer with a split main beam, brow tines longer than 12 inches, and a long drop point. Aiuppa shot the buck, had the skull cap mounted, and kept the antlers hanging in his basement for 32 years.

The rack would likely still be hanging in the basement if they weren’t spotted by one of Aiuppa’s friends, an electrician, doing work at his house. Like any whitetail fanatic, he was stunned by what he saw. It’s a story reminiscent of the Jordan Buck, which went missing, was found at a garage sale more than 40 years later, and then submitted to the Boone and Crockett Club for scoring.

Unearthing the Aiuppa Buck

Word got out about the giant antlers, and it reached collector James Martin. Martin drove from New York to Illinois to meet Aiuppa and ultimately buy the antlers. Martin then started the process for official Boone and Crockett Club scoring and the hunt for the deer’s sheds. He located a single shed and a matched set from the Aiuppa Buck.

The single shed was found tacked to the side of a barn and was first bought by a delivery driver. According to Buckmasters, that shed scored 98-6/8 inches. According to the North American Shed Hunters Club, the matched set scored 95 inches (left) and 104-6/8 inches (right). The sheds show this buck’s progression from a world-class to a world-record rack.

According to Kyle Lehr, Boone and and Crockett Club’s Director of Big Game Records, the Aiuppa Buck was fist submitted like any other record book entry and scored by an official measurer. But, since it was a potential top 10 score, it would need additional verification. It was then measured by two independent scorers. Once the three scores were reviewed by Jon McRoberts, chairman of the Boone and Crockett Club’s Records of North American Big Game Committee, it was placed in its official spot in the top 10 rankings.

The 207 7/8 inch score puts the Aiuppa Buck ahead of the Jordan Buck by 1 6/8 inches and behind the Hanson Buck (213 5/8 inches), making it the new No. 2 all-time typical whitetail and the largest typical whitetail ever taken by a hunter in the United States.

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