Take a step back, pretend you never heard of this story before, and look at from an unbiased point of view. We have 2 major parts to this situation in my opinion.
#1 Was the buck real.
#2 If so, where the heck did it come from.
It’s really as simple as that. Now for #1, I believe the deer in question was real. I believe that because of all the people that actually handled it and their credibility in deciding so, a Tribal conservation warden, and several certified deer scorers. They handled it and were witness's to it dead in the back of his truck, I believe these people over anyone just looking at pictures on the internet, and that’s basically what we have to deal with, not one single person who actually placed hands on those antlers question their authenticity, so looking at this from an unbiased point of view, a non hunter if you will, show someone that proof and tell me what conclusion they would get from that, my guess is they would say the deer must be real and not altered. Do I think Rompola’s credibility sucks, yes I do, does his past legal trouble bother me, yea it’s disgusting enough said, I also think some of those other pictures of dead deer, not the one in question, but other’s, are fakes, they look ridiculous to me and I can’t believe they are real, does that make the “big” buck fake, no it doesn’t. People who have a criminal record, lie, and even fake deer, can still kill a trophy deer, as much as we mite not like it, a person guilty of all those things still could potentially kill a legit animal, it’s not impossible, do those other actions establish a credibility issue for Rompola, absolutely, but it still doesn’t mean the deer in question was a fake or altered animal. So with all that, I believe the deer was real, and that’s about where it ends with me in believing stuff with this story.
#2.. So if your of the mindset the deer is real, like me, where did this thing come from, how did Mitch Rompola come into possession of such a beast, because really, if you follow the evidence, that’s all we know for sure, that he was in possession of a monster dead buck. I believe that it‘s not probable, given the history of the bucks produced in the past from that area, that one single man could pull off such a feat, kill all those wide rack bucks with mega inches while nobody else around kills, enters in the books, or even witnesses such deer, I just don’t think that‘s possible, so with that I agree with some of the latest youtube videos, the odds of that happening are next to impossible. So where did this deer come from, farm, pen raised, deep on some public property lol. I don’t believe it could come from a farm, a buck like that would be worth serious money for breeding purposes, Rompola wasn’t known to be wealthy, I don’t believe that was possible. Deep on public, I doubt it, who knows anything is possible but once again I feel like the odds of a deer like this living deep on public without one single other person having any idea of such an animal seems unlikely, not to mention Rompola has several dead deer, with the same wide racks which would lead one to think others in the area would have tapped into that genetic trait eventually as well, more bucks with wide racks being killed by someone other than Rompola, if in fact he was killing these deer on public land. So where did this buck come from…… I have a theory.. Now I just had a long day at work and it’s been a while since I researched this stuff so I mite be off on some of this a bit, but I believe Rompola lived right across the road from an airport, he still does, it’s no secret anyone can google it, and it’s long been common knowledge he supposedly killed that deer right next to his house and near the airport. I have a good friend that works at an airport about the same size as the one Rompola lives next to, he hunts just like us, and just like most of us he gets excited over anything bigger than 100”, he regularly tells me about seeing big bucks all over the place inside the fence, I told him yea right… now you have to understand my local area does not produce much of anything over 120”, hardly ever…so when he told me about bucks in the 150” class walking around inside a fence by this airport I told him he was crazy, so he took a walk on his lunch break one day and sure enough I started getting pictures of 150” bucks sent to my phone from my buddy while he was out walking, dumb as a box of rocks, big bucks staring at him while he took their picture. I’m pretty sure a few years ago a local guy got caught killing a big buck, inside that fence, he was using a crossbow or something and had a hole cut in the fence he used like a gate and sure enough he killed a larger than life buck for our area and it wasn’t long and word got out and he was busted. So anyways all this got me thinking, Rompola lives next to an airport. He used a bow during open gun season.. hmmmm.. maybe if he had a felony record that is why, or maybe not… but we all know a bow is quiet… he killed many bucks with the same wide rack genetic trait, almost like the deer were closely related, in the dog breeding business that’s called line breeding, or simply put inbreeding, trapped animals inside a fence not being regulated like in a proper deer farm this is the kind of stuff that would happen. Nobody ever knew where he was hunting, his truck was never seen parked anywheres lol, cmon… My theory would also explain how he got those pictures of the deer alive before he killed it, with a regular old camera, that’s a part of this story that’s not talked about much, he somehow managed to walk up to a 200”+ buck and snap photos of it alive with a regular old camera from back in the day, to me that seems more impossible than killing it, I mean can you imagine heading out the door with a Polaroid and snapping a few pics of a 200” deer on the hoof lmao.. So that’s my theory, everybody has one and that’s mine, I believe Rompola walked across the road and had a hole in the fence of that airport property and had his own little hunting paradise to himself, to me it explains a lot of the unknown’s to this story. If your still reading however it gets even better, years ago while researching this stuff online I stumbled onto a thread on some forum, I can’t remember where, in it a gentlemen was talking about this very Rompola mess, he was talking about the airport property and how a wealthy man from Texas had bought a large piece of land bordering the airport (next to Rompola), I believe for hunting reasons, ironically enough when I looked up said property on the county land portal it had a name like whitetail trophy properties or something I can’t remember lol, anyways the man on this forum had did some research on this wealthy buck hunter and found photos of deer he had killed from his ranch, pen, whatever from Texas and they too had crazy wide racks… just like Rompola’s, so is this all a coincidence, who knows… did that rich dude drop a few wide rack bucks or well bred (genetics) does on his Michigan land for breeding reasons and did one hop the fence to Mitch’s honey hole lmao, who knows… do I have a wild imagination and spend way too much time on this subject.. most definitely lmao, I know for sure one thing, only one man knows the truth and whether he spills the beans or not someday is debatable, what isn’t debatable is that some of us will probably not believe him regardless, that includes me. I believe the buck was real, I do not however believe it was killed under fair chase practices hence why he clammed up for all these years, nothing else makes sense to me. All the latest youtube videos bring nothing new to the plate, same old crap, people going back and forth debating the same old stuff, most of it is hearsay, not real proof. The only new development is Gary Berger, one of the actual people that had their hands on that rack scoring it for 1.5 hours, he recently came out and once again said the buck is real, and he was very adamant about it.