James Brennan

The James Brennan BuckJames Brennan was a City Of Denver K9 Police Officer and member of the SWAT Team, but his passion in life has always been hunting and the great outdoors. With a focus on big whitetail bucks, he set his personal goal for a 200-class rack. So, in 2003 Brennan researched an area of western Kansas and obtained permission from a landowner to hunt his ranch as he pursued his 200-class dream. He started scouting the area that summer and was so dedicated that it was nothing for him to drive six hours from his home in Denver to the ranch in Kansas just to scout for a few hours. It was during one of these scouting trips that Brennan spotted a monster buck that fit the 200-class bill, but he soon found that another hunter on the adjoining ranch was after the same buck, and this guy had video of the monster!.

The other hunter was not a bowhunter, so Brennan knew he had 10 days to get the buck before gun season opened and the other hunter got a shot at him. With this in mind, he would climb into his stand before dawn and hunt hard all day…everyday.

He saw the monster several times, but he was always too far away for a shot and he was always on the move. Brennan also noticed that the buck had been fighting and had broken the tips off of a few of his tines. With bow season nearing an end, and the wind kicking up, Brennan decided to get aggressive with the big buck.

The next day Brennan moved his ground blind closer to where he had last seen the deer. On October 28, 2003, Brennan’s efforts paid off when he coaxed the giant 6 ½-year-old buck to his stand using a doe decoy and tending grunt. He made a perfect 24-yard shot with his Muzzy 3-blade, 100-grain broadhead, and the big buck went down. "It all happened so fast...one minute it was quiet with nothing going on, but the wind. Suddenly he topped a little rise and there he was, standing tall and proud. I hit the tending grunt and he came charging in to the decoy. He stopped about 5 yards shy of the decoy and I took the shot he gave me", said Brennan.

Brennan was thrilled with the buck. It was not his first big rack, but it was his first that would net over 200 inches and that was what mattered. Later a friend who knew a little about scoring racks told Brennan that he thought the buck would score approximately 217 net. With this in mind, Brennan never pursued an official Pope & Young score, but quietly knew he had meet his personal goal. Because he has always been quite about the big rack, very few people even knew about the monster.

Muzzy found out about the buck when James sent us a picture of the buck along with a very nice "thanks for making a great broadhead" letter. We had just started putting together the Muzzy 200 Club so we contacted him. That's when we found out the rack had never been officially scored.

Muzzy got the rack scored when we received the original rack for replication. Even with the broken tines the buck ended up grossing 256 3/8” and netting 240 5/8” – much larger than Brennan had originally thought. If Brennan had entered the buck into Pope & Young it would have placed in the top five of the Kansas Pope & Young record book. The Pope & Young scorer that scored the rack for us said that it took him two and a half hours to finish all the measurements, and that in 20 some years of scoring racks he had never seen such a brute!

Brennan had several good, long looks at the buck in his spotting scope while scouting and none of its tines were broken at that time. He estimated that the buck lost some 30 inches of antler mass while fighting. With this estimation, the complete rack could have gross scored more than 285 inches.

The 236-pound (field dressed) main-frame 9-point buck boasted five drop tines, 6 1/8” bases, and sported an additional 76 3/8” of non-typical mass. The rack is a real eye-catcher and one of the most beautiful we have ever seen. Pictures do not do justice with this rack...this one you have to see for yourself!

In the spring of 2005 Brennan retired from the Denver Police Department and moved to Montana where he began managing an outfitter service for Canadian bear hunts so that he could spend more time enjoying the outdoors.