I am far from knowledgeable on this topic, but I lean toward fake (or real deer acquired from some other location and passed off as a local kill) due to several things. That said, I would love to believe that there are monsters like this hiding in plain sight in little brushy strips in populated areas.
One real issue I have is that assuming the deer is 100% legitimate, even given Rompola's issues with the law and, to my understanding, estrangement from the scoring crowd by this point, is the issue that when push came to shove, he withdrew. It looks like if there was nothing to hide, he would have been more than happy to have outside verification prove the buck was real and a world record. Why not? It would have really rubbed it in the face of all those folks who pushed him out of the scoring circles for the legal troubles. If I killed a buck like that on the up and up, I would contact Pope & Young, Boone & Crocket and anyone else and schedule a time for them all to show up at once with cameras and video and make it 100% official. I would not just let every Bubba off the street handle it but certainly recognized top authorities could X ray it, etc. I am sure someone from the state game biology department would want to have a look too.
If you told me Rompola was a very introverted guy who just lived to hunt and would not interact with people, only hunted for his own gratification and hated trophy hunting, publicity and scoring. I would say, OK, that makes sense. He was an official scorer, so he obviously had no issue with scoring or public presentation of bucks and the competition that goes along with that.
A counterpoint is the idea that urban areas can hide huge deer is illustrated by the Seek One guys on Youtube who drag some very impressive deer out of the Atlanta suburbs.
From everything I have heard I do believe Rompola was a very good hunter. I think he just got wrapped up in the idea of having a world record and just did not sit down and really think out all the scrutiny this would bring.
It's sort of like someone who runs for city council. Somebody local may look into you and your past. If you run for president, you are going to get raked over the coals and they are going to dig for every dirty little secret they can use against you. When you kill at 140 inch 8 point most folks will give a stranger the benefit of the doubt. If you claim to kill the world record buck in an area where a 130 is a giant and there are zero bucks on record over the entire history of the state that come anywhere close, you are going to get a lot of scrutiny.
I would love to have proof come out that the buck is 100% real. It would be much more interesting that the idea that someone went too far and got caught. That happens all too often. I'll hold out a little hope, but my brain and gut say nope.
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