Dreams of Slobberknockers

By Mike Maynard

So, I learned a new word the other day. Slobberknocker. As in, “Boys! There’s some jeezly big slobberknockers out there!” Does colloquial County-speak get any better than that? I don’t think so. I was introduced to the word while trying to nail down the story of the biggest buck ever killed in Maine. Here, as well as New Hampshire, and Vermont, we define our BIG deer by a dressed body weight, as it should be. A big rack is not a big deer, it’s just a big rack. I’ve seen 150 inch deer in western New York that wouldn’t dress out to 150 pounds. They look like Max from “The Grinch that stole Christmas”.

Big Deer

I started thinking about really big deer out of hatred. Hatred for one deer. A very big deer. For 5 long years now I’ve gotten pictures of this deer as he passes through my lower pasture. Every year he gets bigger, and every year, he ghosts through another season unscathed. Like Edgar and Johnny Winter, he only comes out at night; I have zero pictures of him in the daylight. He appears to be a very traditional 10-12 pointer; hard to say exactly because it’s always dark. The rack is nice, but we’ve all seen bigger. But what is astonishing, is the sheer size of him. This deer is huge! He looks like a horse with a stubby tail and antlers. I hate him.

If I’m being honest, and that’s hard to do with a deer this big, I’m guessing his dressed weight is somewhere in the neighborhood of 240lbs. Although 230lbs. wouldn’t hurt my feelings either. But that weight is nothing compared to the deer that Horace Hinkley shot back in November 1955, down below Moosehead.

Horace and his wife were hunting in Bingham, following the Kennebec that November morning. Hinkley’s wife, Olive, (how many parents name their children Horace or Olive these days?) was carrying a Winchester 38-40, and Horace had his Winchester model 1886 chambered for .33 with 200g bullets and a Lyman peep sight. Hinkley called it a ‘moose gun’ because of the pure knock-down power the round possessed.

Hinkley Deer

Hinkley stated that around 9:30 in the morning he got busted by a nice buck. He thought his day was done, but he decided to sit tight for a bit, …just in case. As he waited quietly, he heard the sound of Olive’s Winchester in the distance. Hinckley said his wife shouted for him to hurry over as she had just shot a big buck. And this is one of life’s serendipitous moments: he didn’t answer his wife’s call. And at that very moment, along through the bushes came the buck that dreams are made of. It was running, but Hinkley took the shot anyway. The deer piled up, made one half-hearted lunge, and then lay still.

Hinkley hollered back to his wife, “You come over here, I’ll show you what a BIG buck really looks like!” Olive Hinckley’s buck dressed out somewhere a little over 200lbs. Their son, Phillip, had just shot a big buck of his own, as had Phillip’s wife. All four family members tagged out with big bucks within an hour of each other. When it came time to drag Hinkley’s buck out of the woods, they couldn’t do it. They had to leave the deer and go for more help. When they finally did get it out of the woods Hinkley simply hung it up at his house. Three days went by before enough people finally convinced him he had shot a record breaker, and that he should have it weighed. They couldn’t find a scale big enough. They finally found Forrest Brown. Brown worked as an official ‘State Sealer of Weights and Measures’, and lived in Vassalboro. Brown quickly agreed to weigh Hinkley’s buck. After three days of drying out the buck still weighed in at a staggering 355lbs. Two of Brown’s neighbors happened to come along as they were about to start, and stood witness to the weighing, Brown and the neighbors all signing an affidavit to the results.

The deer’s other measurements were just as impressive. A 30-inch neck, body girth behind the front legs 48 inches, chest 58 inches, and a total length of just under 10 feet. A game warden and a biologist, whose names were not recorded, both stated that had Hinkley weighed the deer immediately after recovering it, it probably would have posted closer to 380lbs.

We’ve all seen big deer. The two biggest bucks I’ve ever seen: a 278-pounder taken in Oakfield back in the 80’s, and a 302-pound giant taken around Monticello, again in the 80’s. These two weights are unofficial, as they were never corroborated on a certified scale. My good buddy Bob has the rack, and the pictures, from a 311-pound monster taken by his grandfather in Castle Hill back in the late 1950’s.

They’re out there, the slobberknockers; they are the creatures of our fever-dreams. And just when the well of your dreams seems to have run dry, a nice big 8 pointer will run across the road in front of you one night, and your metaphorical cup of hunting goodness suddenly runneth over again. You are reborn and the fire burns just as hot as ever. I’m pretty sure I’m never going to use the word slobberknocker in an actual conversation, but I’m still glad I learned it.

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