A 207 7/8-Inch Buck Was Hiding in an Illinois Basement for Three Decades

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.

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.

The Aiuppa Buck was scored three times by different Official Measurers. The scores were then reviewed by Jon McRoberts, chairman of the Boone and Crockett Club’s Records of North American Big Game Committee, who confirmed the official score of 207 7/8 inches.

The 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.

Top 5 Typical Whitetails