Orrin Valente of Cumberland (left) and Harold Larrabee admire Valente's 277-pound buck, the largest deer certified in Maine in 2004, taken near Caribou Lake. Photo by Robert Verrill

How many big bucks were taken during Maine's 2004 season? Just ask the Biggest Bucks In Maine Club. The club was started years ago by a state agency that no longer exists. Their hope was that if word got out about how many 200-pound-plus bucks were roaming the Maine woods, more hunters would be lured into the state.

Harry Vanderweide, editor and general manager of The Maine Sportsman, which now keeps track of Maine's top bucks, said hunters must weigh field-dressed deer on state-certified scales, fill out an application card and have it signed by a Maine game warden.

There were 625 "biggest" bucks registered in 2004.

"In a good year, we'll get at least one deer that has a field-dressed weight of around 300 pounds, and two or three that are over 290 pounds," he said. "The live weight of such deer would be in excess of 360 pounds, and that's a heck of a big buck."

The 2004 harvest wasn't the heaviest on record, but Maine still had lots of happy hunters.

BIGGEST OF ALL!
Orrin Valente of Cumberland registered a 277-pound buck, the largest deer certified in 2004.

Valente has hunted for years with Robert Verrill, staying at Verrill's camp near Caribou Lake. On Nov. 6, Valente, Verrill and several hunting buddies arrived by late afternoon. They decided to ride old logging roads looking for tracks and crossing trails. They found the tracks of a large buck following a doe, but it was too late to hunt the deer.

They had no luck finding the big buck at the end of those tracks on Monday. On Tuesday, the hunters returned to the tracks and split up. It was a crisp, cool day and the snow was crunchy underfoot.

"I was following a skidder path," Valente recalled, "doing your typical stop-and-look. I got in there about half a mile and still hadn't seen anything. I was looking at an old, grown-up chopping full of raspberry bushes, thinking it would be an ideal place for a deer to stand and watch me."

When Valente took his next step, the buck broke cover and disappeared in two long lopes.

"I was in awe because it was such a beautiful animal," Valente said. The buck disappeared behind a knoll. Valente crept over the rise and looked down into the valley. Nothing. He topped the knoll again and spotted the buck standing about 150 yards away. He carefully aimed just behind the buck's shoulder and fired.

"He made a mistake; I did everything right," Valente said.

"It took five of us an hour to drag him out," Valente said.

"This is the biggest buck I've ever gotten," he said. "I've taken one that was 190 before and a lot in the 170-and 180-pound range. I'm not one for trophies, but this was a beautiful animal -- so unusual."

MORE MONSTER BUCKS
Somebody must have let Greg Pinette's big buck do a little growing over the years, too. Pinette took Maine's second largest buck, a bruiser weighing in at 275 pounds, on Nov. 12 in T15, R8 in the northern reaches of the state.

Third place among the state's big-buck hunters this year went to Walter Scullin Jr. of Phillips. Scullin said he had come to Maine from New Jersey to hunt big bucks for 40 years. He is now a Maine resident, and thrilled to have access to 8,000 acres of public hunting grounds behind his mountain home. He had taken a couple of bucks weighing in at over 200 pounds during those years, but nothing to top the 272-pound 8-point buck he shot on Nov. 11 in his own back yard.

"It was about 8:30 a.m.," Scullin recalled. "There were three of us making a little push through a swampy area." The three friends knew a big buck was nearby because the animal had crossed the road in front of one of them before legal shooting time.