If records are made to be broken, Orfordville hunter Nate Olsen’s trophy buck may soon hold that title.
“I’ve shed hunted a lot. I’ve hunted a lot. I have many, many miles on my boots looking for sheds. And to come across this, it’s a diamond in the rough,” Olsen tells NBC15 News.
Every winter, bucks drop their antlers and grow a new pair by the fall. Searching for these antlers has become known as “shed hunting,” a pastime that introduced Olsen to his new best friend.
“The record for the biggest deer in Wisconsin ever to be found or killed is 253 inches. And he is flirting with breaking the record,” he says. “It’s been 47 years. Let’s see if he can do it.”
Olsen and a friend were shed hunting on February 1, when they came across a once in a lifetime find.
“I froze in my tracks. I tried getting [my friend’s] attention, couldn’t say a word,” he says.
The deer, and all 23 of its points, was tangled with another buck. After Olsen made the discovery, he called the Department of Natural Resources right away.
“It’s not that uncommon to find them tangled, but to find a deer of this caliber, is very, very uncommon,” says Olsen’s friend Mike Hackett.
Hackett had been tracking this same buck for the past three years on his trail cam.
“I’ve shot several that make the book, but this one here’s kind of way bigger than anything I’ve ever experienced,” Hackett says.
To break the record, the buck needs to be officially measured by the Wisconsin Buck and Bear Club or the Boone and Crockett Club. Olsen plans to have those measurements completed at the Deer and Turkey Expo the first weekend of April.
Since his big find, Olsen says he has been living on Cloud 9. Though he wishes he could have shot the deer himself, coming across it may have been fate.
“I don’t know if my arrow would have been able to stay on my rest. If I would have been able to shoot it, I don’t think I would have been getting out of the tree stand too easily. I would have been calling someone up there saying, ‘Carry me out of here, please,’” Olsen says.
