Dennis Anderson: Want to bag a big buck? In Minnesota, you can -- but not everywhere.

MINNEAPOLIS — Want to bag a trophy whitetail when Minnesota’s firearms deer season opens Nov. 7?

Of course you do.

Everyone who has ever climbed into a tree stand prefers that a buck ambles by within shooting range, rather than a doe.

And the bigger the better.

With its own data center, the Boone and Crockett Club (B&C) can help you achieve that goal.

Not the kind of data center that sucks aquifers dry and eats up good wildlife habitat.

But the kind that has recorded the time and place of every record-book buck killed in Minnesota — and other states — in the past century.

Not only time and place. But the temperature at the time of kill, the caliber of rifle or gauge of shotgun used, the distance at which shots are taken — even the barometric pressure.

The best part: Anyone can access this information, which has been recently digitized and made available in an interactive search platform.

Some background.

In 1887 — 14 years before he became U.S. president — Teddy Roosevelt and a handful of his buddies formed the Boone and Crockett Club in New York City.

Their goal was to end market hunting and save America’s wild places. They also wanted to document the nation’s ability to support wildlife. To do so, they measured the antlers and skull sizes of game animals killed by hunters.

Adding those measurements up delivers a score. If that score is over 160 for a typical whitetail, you’ve got yourself a trophy buck. Over 170? That’s an all-timer.

In the many years since, B&C has evolved into a leading conservation organization and the nation’s foremost repository of big game records. Headquartered in Missoula, Mont., B&C documents virtually all circumstances prevailing when North American trophy game animals are harvested by hunters.

Examples:

The B&C data also can indicate whether Minnesota has as many record-book deer now as it did in the past.

The size of the state’s whitetail herd must be considered, of course, when asking this question, because a bigger herd likely will produce more trophy bucks than a smaller herd.

That said, the period 2006-2015 produced the most Minnesota B&C record book entries of any 10-year period in history, 316 trophies in all.

Now let’s dig deeper.

Did the record number of B&C whitetails registered by Minnesota hunters between 2006-2015 also represent the highest scoring Minnesota whitetail trophies of all time?

Or, in fact, as some hunters allege, is the state’s trophy whitetail gene pool being diluted by Department of Natural Resources (DNR) deer harvest strategies that emphasize the total number of bucks and does killed each year, vs. the number of quality bucks killed?

On this count, DNR skeptics appear to be correct.

The three all-time highest-scoring typical Minnesota bucks were killed not in recent years, but in 1918 (scoring 202), 1961 (201) and 1954 (199 2/8). All-time record non-typical Minnesota bucks, meanwhile, were recorded in 2023 (277 3/8), 1974 (268 5/8) and 1973 (258 2/8).

Let’s also look at trophy deer killed in St. Louis County, which is Minnesota’s largest county and among its most heavily wooded. Among all 87 of the state’s counties, St. Louis has registered the most B&C whitetails.

Yet in recent years, many hunters in St. Louis County have reported fewer deer sightings, due in part, they believe, to an expanding wolf population and changing tree cover, perhaps among other reasons.

Thus a question: Do St. Louis County B&C entries in recent years reflect these hunter reports?

Yes, they do. The 10 highest scoring St. Louis County record-book bucks were killed not in recent years, but in 1964 (240 6/8), 1938 (225 2/8), 2004 (224 2/8), 1983 (218 5/8), 1957 (217 2/8), 1935 (213), 1968 (212 1/8), 1963 (211 4/8), 1957 (209 7/8) and 1940 (208 3/8).

Another indication, perhaps, of Minnesota’s changing landscape and the critters it supports can be found in B&C entries from Otter Tail County, located in the wildlife-rich transition zone between the state’s prairies and woods.

There, between 2000 and 2025, 54 trophy whitetail entries were recorded in the B&C trophy book, compared with only 22 from St. Louis County.

Now consider Houston County, in southeast Minnesota.

Historically, Houston County has been home to big bucks, at least for hunters who can access the private land that dominates the region.

Houston is also near Olmsted County, where chronic wasting disease (CWD) was first discovered in Minnesota wild deer in 2010. Since then, hunters’ deer limits have been liberalized and sharpshooters brought in by the DNR to reduce the size of the region’s herd — therefore limiting the spread, theoretically, of CWD.

In the process, has the number of Houston County trophy bucks registered by B&C declined?

It appears so.

Of the 28 Houston County whitetails registered by B&C from 2010 to 2025, only seven were killed in the last five years of that 15-year span.

Which brings us back to the Nov. 7 opener of this year’s firearms deer season.

On that day, a half-hour before sunrise, perhaps you’ll be among Minnesota’s most fortunate deer hunters, cradling in your arms a rifle chambered for .30-06 while perched in an oak tree overlooking a sweet woodlot on private land in Otter Tail County.

If so, you’ll have the same odds in your favor to shoot a big buck that other Minnesota hunters have had in the past.

Or maybe you won’t be so fortunate.

Maybe instead you’ll be crouched on an overturned 5-gallon bucket in Jackson, Nobles or Rock counties, each of which, in the past century, have produced only one record-book B&C buck.

Either way, count your blessings.

Not only will you be outdoors, carrying on a tradition as old as time, you’ll have the heavens in your favor.

On this first day of the season, no matter where you’ll be in the state, a waning crescent moon will shine down on you and the state’s nearly 500,000 other whitetail hunters — just has it has on previous openers when trophy bucks were most likely to amble by within shooting range.

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