Rickey Carney always figured that some day, some way, he’d end up shooting the deer of a lifetime. Carney also knew that when that day came, he’d make a few changes.

“I hunted for a lot of years,” the 46-year-old Ashland man said on Monday. “I’ve seen a lot of big deer and I’ve seen some small deer.

“But I said to my son, ‘When I shoot my big deer, I’m gonna retire and give you my rifle and you can carry on the tradition,'” Carney said.

The question, then, is this: How big is big enough?

Carney didn’t have an exact number in mind, but says he had already shot deer that weighed about 220 pounds, and one that weighed 240. And when the big one came along, he’d know it.

When he went hunting on Nov. 14, in Garfield Plantation, he found the answer in the form of a once-in-a-lifetime buck.

“I was walking around in the field and it was very foggy,” Carney said. “I had a hard time seeing. I could see spots here, spots there, 50 to 150 yards away.”

Then, after walking to a spot where the field bends, he saw the buck.

“I’ve shot a fair amount of good-sized deer, but when I saw this one, I said, ‘Look at that.’ He was wide. That was what caught my eye right off,” he said.

Carney raised his .300 Winchester magnum, fired, and bagged his deer … his big deer … and what he claims will be his final deer.

“I tagged it in Ashland at the [Gateway Variety], and when [the clerk] picked it up on his scale, he freaked out,” Carney said.

A repeat weigh-in in Washburn, where a friend’s brother had bagged a big deer, proved that Carney’s buck was, in fact, a monster.

Not that he didn’t already know that.

“It weighed 272 [field-dressed] in Ashland, 275 in Washburn,” he said.

Rich Hoppe, the regional biologist for the Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife, sees plenty of big deer. But he was impressed when Carney brought him a photo.

“It’s a long-bodied deer,” he said. “It’s not an exceptionally big rack – it’s an eight-point – but the deer is just very large.”

Hoppe said he’d conservatively estimate that Carney’s deer weighed 25 percent more on the hoof, before it was field-dressed.

“You’re putting on another 68 pounds on that, you’re talking about a 340-pound deer, live weight,” Hoppe said.

The state record buck was one shot by Horace Hinckley in 1955. That buck weighed 355 pounds, field-dressed. According to Hoppe’s formula, the Hinckley buck would have weighed about 443 pounds on the hoof.

That buck, Hoppe points out, is nearly mythical among Maine hunters. Big deer – even monstrous deer like Carney’s – simply fall short in comparison to that behemoth shot 50 years ago.

Carney realizes that. There are probably bigger deer than his in the Maine woods. But after about 25 years of tromping around, he’s finally satisfied.

“I think this is the biggest deer I’m ever gonna shoot,” said Carney, who followed through on his plan on the evening of Nov. 14.

He sat down with his son, Matthew, and told him a story.

“He didn’t even know I had shot a deer,” Carney said. “But I said, ‘Here’s my gun. Here’s the rest of my equipment. You can carry on from here.”

Salmon escape update

Atlantic salmon anglers and conservationists have been paying particular attention to the recent “escape” of farm-raised fish as a result of apparent sabotage at a Cooke Aquaculture facility in New Brunswick.

According to the Atlantic Salmon Federation, the fears of fishermen and conservation groups have been realized with the latest of four escapes.

An ASF news release last week announced that its researchers have recovered 45 of the escaped fish from four streams and rivers in Charlotte County, New Brunswick. Of those, 43 fish – 95 percent – are sexually mature. About 100,000 fish have escaped after their pens were sabotaged in four separate incidents since spring, the ASF said.

The ASF pointed out that Cooke Aquaculture had issued assurances that the escaped fish were not mature.

ASF President Bill Taylor said the escapees “have the potential to greatly harm wild salmon, especially those that are already struggling for survival in the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf of Maine rivers.”

Taylor said the ASF would remain vigilant in its efforts to protect wild fish.

“ASF’s research team will continue our work to prevent escaped farmed salmon from reaching the spawning beds, where wild salmon are now producing the next generation that will have the genetic makeup to survive the rigors of the wild and make the long migration to the ocean and back,” Taylor said.

John Holyoke can be reached at jholyoke@bangordailynews.net or by calling 990-8214 or 1-800-310-8600.