Alberta Monster Buck Has 50 Inches of Mass

After passing up a tempting buck twice, Luke Whist was rewarded with this world-class monster. Images courtesy of Luke Whist

Luke Whist, of British Columbia, attended business school for a year after finishing high school, but he soon realized that a desk job isn’t for him. He switched gears and enrolled in an adventure guiding program, and these days he spends his time helping with goat and moose hunts in B.C., and deer and moose hunts in Alberta.

Having the life of a hunting guide leaves minimal time for personal hunting, but Whist says that there are some opportunities in between clients, particularly at Red Willow Outfitters, which is where he guides in Alberta.

“Red Willow runs six-day hunts,” Whist said, “so we have about one day a week that we can hunt. If clients tag out and head home early, there can be additional days. In 2024, my boss, Taylor, said he’d help me out with strategizing, dropping me off, and picking me up. He said that we would focus on the less desirable big sections of public land. Basically, the deep woods places where you can’t really glass.”

In 2024, Whist tried out a bunch of different spots without much luck. Meanwhile, guys who were hunting a different area would return to camp and tell stories about giant bucks they had seen while looking for moose. Whist began hunting the area with some of his clients and trying to learn it. Taylor helped him get a 143-inch 10-pointer, which was his first-ever whitetail. Last fall, Whist was determined to learn more about the area where the other guides had reported seeing giant bucks. After discussing it with his boss, he put more trail cameras in the area than the previous year.

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“I started walking through as much timber as I could, looking for sign and hanging cameras,” he said. “I didn’t get much on the cameras because it was pretty warm in October. I moved the cameras around and watched for new scrapes. Finally, the temperatures dropped at the end of October. I was out in that area with a client one day, and we were scouting around and found a couple of recent scrapes. They hadn’t been worked for several days. We kept looking around and located a really fresh scrape. We hung a camera and kept hunting further into the unit.”

Within an hour, Whist’s phone pinged with some exciting data. A hot doe had peed in the scrape. Half an hour later, a buck hit the scrape before following the doe. About 15 minutes later, another buck did the same thing, and 15 minutes after that, a third buck did likewise.

“I knew it was a good area to focus on,” Whist said. “But I was guiding clients, and that was my priority. On Nov. 4, I was guiding a moose hunter when I got a text from another guide saying, ‘Check the camera now.’ When I did, I saw a video of a huge buck coming to the scrape in the daylight. I got another video of him that day, and you can hear him grunting in the video. The buck was substantially larger than anything I had previously seen.”

While Whist was still guiding clients, the buck seemed to go missing for a while, and then it reappeared on camera on Nov. 15, and on a couple of days after that. Whist took a client into the area, hoping to draw the buck out with a rattling sequence.

The buck dwarfed the other bucks on the trail camera.

“I was guiding my second-to-last client of the season,” he said. “We were walking into the area and were planning to rattle to see if we could pull the buck out, but wolves began howling. We just backed out because we didn’t want to put any more pressure on the area. My client told me that he would rather cover ground than sit in one spot anyway. By Day 4, he had killed a moose and a whitetail. That left me with three full days to hunt.

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“My boss had some free time and was able to drop me off every day,” Whist continued. “I had a treestand in the general area, but it needed to be moved. So, on my first day off, I went in, tore the setup down, and moved it right into the buck’s core area about 35 feet up in an aspen. I put doe estrus in the scrape and left the area.”

The following morning, a 140-class 8-pointer tempted Whist, but he held off, waiting for the giant. He hunted the rest of the day with minimal activity. That night, while getting ready for bed, his phone dinged. It was the best video footage yet of the monster buck hitting the scrape.

“I started freaking out,” he said. “Everything seemed to be lining up perfectly for the next morning’s hunt. I was checking the weather, and I noticed the wind would be gusting to about 50 kilometers per hour around noon. If it was going to happen, it would be in the morning before the wind.

“I called a buddy who’s an outfitter in Alberta, and he gave me a tip,” Whist continued. “He said to find a tarsal gland from a buck that wasn’t killed in the area. ‘When you walk to your stand, drag that tarsal gland behind you,’ he said. The idea was that the buck would smell it and follow it right to my stand. We had just done a dump run with the week’s deer and moose carcasses, so we didn’t have a tarsal gland. My boss and I went to the local roadkill drop-off. We found a buck there, and I cut off the tarsal gland.”

When Whist was dropped off at his hunting spot, he dragged the tarsal gland behind him on the way to the stand. He settled into his treestand about 15 minutes before dawn.

“At the beginning of legal shooting light, I rattled gently for a few minutes,” he said. “I heard some footsteps coming my way. I spotted the same 8-pointer I had passed up the previous day. He followed my tarsal gland trail right beneath me. Once he wandered out of view, I waited a few minutes and rattled a little more aggressively.

“I heard footsteps coming from where the buck had disappeared,” Whist continued. “I was waiting, and the deer started circling and got behind a big pine tree. I couldn’t see anything. Finally, I saw the buck’s left antler beam about 20 yards below me, and I instantly knew that it was him. I stood and slowly turned around. The buck stopped, and I started raising my gun. He instantly got alert and snorted. He turned and was leaving. Right before he went out of view, he hit the tarsal gland trail and slowed down. I aimed right at his heart and squeezed the trigger.”

The Whist buck packs 50 inches of mass, a number most bucks don’t even come close to.

The animal disappeared into the timber at the shot. Whist got down to investigate, approaching where the buck had been standing. Right where the buck was hit, he noticed a drop of blood. He began following the tracks and noticed blood on both sides, confirming a solid hit.

“I followed it to the edge of the timber,” Whist explained, “and then I noticed the buck lying dead near the quad trail I’d hiked in on that morning. Walking up on the buck, I realized that I was living a dream that I’d had since I was a little guy. I had watched countless videos of stuff like this.”

The world-class animal is only Whist’s second whitetail. It has eight points on the right, including a small drop tine on the main beam, and six points on the left. The inside spread is 16 7/8 inches. Most notably, the mass measurements total about 50 inches. Overall, the buck grossed 192 5/8 inches.