Mark this one down as the new whitetail Internet wonder. Photos of this buck have been floating around the Web for at least three or four years. I just received it four times in the past week. Someone must have resurrected it and the chain of emails is being passed around once again. The mythical “412-pound buck” made the rounds recently, with the new tag-line of it being killed in northern Michigan. Although we cannot verify the location of this kill, we are certain that this buck did not weigh that much. The location of the wound, intestinal area, seems to indicate that this buck was recovered after suffering from a gastric condition for some time. This condition occurs when a deer is wounded and survives for several days (sometimes weeks). The condition causes a slow leak in the gastro-intestinal system and, hence, causes bloating of the stomach/chest chambers, and, sometimes, a bloating of the skin surfaces. This gives the appearance of a large body when, in fact, the deer is of normal size. I have seen similar cases over the years, including one Nebraska buck that ballooned so large that its head was absolutely dwarfed by its swollen neck.
--Dan Schmidt