What likely is the biggest white-tailed buck shot in any season in Ohio this fall, or maybe ever - a 250-pounder with a massive, mooselike 39-point set of antlers - was killed Nov. 8 in Greene County by bowhunter Mike Beatty of Xenia, Ohio.

News - and rumors - about the monster whitetail have spread like wildfire. And Beatty and his buck have been deluged with inquiries and attention. In a way, he has won the whitetail lottery; he could make hundreds of thousands of dollars on the trophy.

But the hunter has a “privacy manager” attached to his telephone service to screen calls, and he isn't talking - except to an unidentified outdoors magazine, which apparently has tied up exclusive first rights to tell his tale.

“He got bombarded,” said Todd Haines, wildlife management supervisor for the District 5 office of the Ohio Division of Wildlife at Xenia. “He's been working with a magazine on that story. Until that is released, we can't say any more than we've already done.”

World-class antlers are jealously prized. “He's already turned down six figures, and that's $100,000 in my book,” said Ron Perrine Sr., of Xenia. He is an official scorer for the Boone & Crockett Club, which keeps track of all trophy deer and other game.

“I told him he's got a million-dollar deer,” added Perrine. “Non-typicals are the really big money because they're one of a kind.” The antlers reportedly are locked up for safekeeping out of state, and Beatty has hired an attorney to deal with the magazines and equipment companies that want to pay big bucks for a piece of the action.

Perrine scored Beatty's buck, green, at 2913/8 . The rack must dry 60 days before an official scoring, but Perrine thinks the final score will remain close. The antlers can be officially scored on Jan. 7.

“It's a lot like a moose,” Perrine said, noting the Beatty buck's heavily-palmated beams. Perrine, a well-known and respected scorer, said the Beatty buck is in line to become the fifth-largest nontypical whitetail of all time in North America.

He also is a scorer for the Pope & Young Club, which keeps archery records, the Longhunter Society, which oversees muzzleloading records, and the Buckeye Big Bucks Club.

The Beatty buck is a shoe-in to become the largest bow-killed buck ever in Ohio, and is surpassed only by the legendary Hole-In-Horn buck, which was found dead along a railroad track in Portage County in 1940. The antlers later were discovered hanging in a bar in Kent; they scored at 3281/4.

Perrine noted that the Beatty buck cannot become a world archery record. “It's not going to be Pope & Young because he (Beatty) used a Matthews compound bow with an 80 percent let-off. Pope & Young draws the line at 65 percent.”

Only if the P&Y rules change later would the buck become eligible, Perrine said. The current top archery nontypical scored 2797/8 and was taken by Del Austin in 1962 in Nebraska.

Details on the actual quest for the Beatty buck are sketchy because of the imposed secrecy. But the Beatty buck is legitimate, perhaps unlike the controversial Rompola buck in Michigan in 1998.

“There's been a bunch of rumors out there, as you might understand with a buck this size,” said the wildlife division's Haines regarding the Beatty deer. “But the division worked with him right from the start to assure that this is a legal deer.”

Hunters typically are suspicious of claims of record bucks because of many attempts to fake them and because of the big-dollar endorsements that surround huge antlers.

Haines agreed that the Beatty buck is worth “definitely in the thousands ... when you talk about world-class deer and product endorsements.”

The controversial Rompola buck, a 12-point typical with a 38-inch spread, never has been officially scored. Mitch Rompola has said that he killed it in lower Michigan's Grand Traverse County.

Rompola has been embroiled in controversy over the buck since, in part because of his refusal to allow an official scoring. He initially claimed a score of 2165/8, which would have surpassed the world typical record of 2131/8, taken in Saskatchewan in 1993 by Milo Hanson, of Biggar, Sask. Last year Rompola claimed the rack scored 2185/8.

Perrine said that Beatty was hunting on private land in Xenia Township, just outside the city of Xenia. “I think he told me that he had seen it once before. He said he was waiting on a big one but this one just showed up out of nowhere.”

The scorer said the Beatty buck was aged at 41/2 by the condition of its teeth. He thinks, by looking at the skullcap, that it could be 41/2 to 51/2 years old. Trophy bucks, he added, can be in their prime for antler development up to 81/2 years of age.

Big racks, Perrine explained, are a product of good nutrition (minerals and food), superior genetics and time.

Steve Pollick is The Blade's outdoor writer. E-mail him at spollick@theblade.com.

First Published December 10, 2000, 12:23 p.m.