dihardhunter over at The Outdoor Smorgasbord and his father have returned to Kansas again this year to chase big deer. He’s not quite an hour southwest of where I killed my Missouri rifle buck and about 1.5 hours Southeast of where I do most of my Kansas bowhunting. He’s promising regular updates so check here every day for an update.

So I told you I was not in a discriminating state of mind with respect to my 2009 Missouri rifle tag. Regular readers will remember that I ate this tag last year after hunting more than half the days. It wasn’t a lack of opportunities; it was the two studs I saw early in the season. I held out hoping to get a shot at one of them, and it wasn’t to be.

So this year I knew it would be difficult for me to pass a decent buck. It might have been my saving grace that the first thing I saw as it became light enough to shoot was a decent buck. It would be too easy to shoot a 130 class 8 point in the first 5 minutes of the season. After all, I’d packed a lunch and thermos of coffee. I was prepared to sit all day and had cleared the first three days of the season off my calendar. Over the course of the morning I passed a slightly better 8 than the first, and a heavy 6 twice. Every buck I saw was either chasing a doe or looking for one to chase. From 10:30-12:00 I was preoccupied with the poachers. Around 12:30 I saw the heavy 6 yet again. As the afternoon started to heat up this deer came by:

Around the same time I saw a heavy 10 with a doe at the far end of the field I was watching. He was 600 yards away and appeared to be afraid of the half buck above. For the next couple of hours he would appear from the grass slightly closer, and then disappear again. Finally he gave me a chance at 320 yards. I hesitated, not sure of the shot, and he was gone again. With the fading light I figured my chance was gone. I watched the half buck, a spike, and various furry things fiddle around in front of me until it was almost time to pick up… then he was back. He was looking right at me at 125 yards. I didn’t hesitate this time:

Great mass, good length, character… I’m pleased… But now it’s back to work on the Kansas tag…

dukkillr: Good morning. Do you know where you are?
Dirtball local poacher: Where I am I?
duk: Not where you belong. I own from here to the river.
DLP: Oh, well… We were just following deer we shot on our side of the river…
duk: But those deer are dry?
DLP: Oh… well… those kids shot them on your side of the river… I wasn’t with them…
duk: How did you get here?
DLP: We’ve got a boat.
duk: How’d the boat get here?
DLP: We brought it with us.
duk: You left home this morning with the intention of trespassing and poaching?
DLP: Umm…
duk: Well, how many did they kill? It sounded like they shot themselves out of shells.
DLP: Just these two does, they missed a lot.
duk: Gut them and get out of here. If anyone sees you here again we’ll call the sheriff.

You rarely see this kind of dishonest human trash while hunting in Kansas. I’ve thought about the reasons why before, but maybe the answer is simple: Missouri is full of Quantrill loving, moonshine drinking, discount cigarette smoking, MU rooting, rust bucket driving, welfare receiving, wife beating dirtballs.

Or maybe it’s more complicated… Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the parts of the hunt not ruined by the people above. BTW, anybody recognize them?

You’ll have to wait for a report from the Missouri rifle opener. This afternoon The Old Man and I hit the marsh and had a fun shoot in a cold rain. You can tell by looking at the picking room that some new ducks are down and everyone is having a good hunt:

I’m once again away from my computer chasing deer. This time it’s a Missouri rifle tag that’s burning a hole in my pocket. I’m afraid me recent frustrations with Kansas archery may be bad news for a 130-140 class Missouri buck that has the nerve to show up on opening morning. Hopefully I can hold out for one of those two monsters I saw last year, but I can tell my will power is slipping. I’ll have pictures and updates when I get home, which may be anywhere from Saturday afternoon through Monday. For those of you who are chasing upland birds in Kansas or whitetails in Missouri, good luck, be safe, and have fun.

So after CA left I had a few days to work, sleep, and generally recover before The Arkansas Guys came in. They are friends who started coming up to duck hunt years ago and that relationship has morphed into several hunts, trail rides, and fishing trips a year all over the country. I look forward to their emails because there is always a picture and a story.

The first time I hunted with them I was amazed at how when I said, “Kill ‘em” they jumped up and actually killed them. No question that is unusual among guys I’ve taken duck hunting. Then a few years later I was with one of them in the spring when an old tom came in way too close. He was a foot from the tree line and only a few feet from the shooter. As situations like that tend to do, it went bad. The tom spooked and in an impossibly small window my shooter leaned forward and rolled that tom at a dead run with a borrowed shotgun. They are killers.

This year was quick and dirty. First morning, bam:

He rattled the buck in after it looked like it would pass 100 yards in front of him. Unfortunately his first shot opportunity was nearly straight down which caused him to whack his cam on the stand when he shot. The shot was back a bit and high, but the recovery wasn’t hard. Life is good.

I’ve become friends with the owner of the sandwich shop a few miles from my office. I’m not exactly sure how it came to pass, but at some point I discovered that he’s a hunter and runs field trials with pointers. Occasionally he brings his ridiculously cute kid in and I get to hear about his exploits as well. Anyway, I try to hit his place up at least once a week to hear how his season is going and swap stories. A few weeks ago he showed me the picture his nephew had captured of a giant Kentucky buck. At the time he had the buck relatively patterned, to which I responded, “Well what is he waiting for?” My fears were for naught. He dropped the hammer, or rather the string, on this stud just recently:

Well this is the first in a series of dead Kansas buck pictures and stories I’ll bring you. It’s also the least interesting… CA-Chucky was in town for the several days last week to chase deer around with his Black Widow recurve. We’d been seeing deer at nearly every stand but the corn is still standing and that is affecting everything we do. It’s hard to get around, some stands are completely inaccessible, and the deer are not traveling the usual tree lines because they feel more secure in the corn. CA was seeing small bucks and does but no shooters anywhere I put him. So I took a flyer one afternoon and found a high vantage to glass over a giant pasture with a handful of washes running through the middle. I’d eyed this spot occasionally during turkey season but I’d never set foot there. During my scouting I found a bunch of deer feeding downhill towards the cut corn fields across the road as the afternoon went on. The next night CA headed in to scout on foot, and hopefully find a place to ambush a big buck as he worked towards the corn. It almost worked. He found a likely crossing and a great buck, but the buck didn’t follow the does in front of him and ended up passing by out of range. CA ultimately left empty handed again, but a no-doubt stud was seen there a few days later. We put the Arkansas guys over there a couple of times too, but the buck outsmarted us again.

The picture I promised?

That’s my boot just for reference. Unfortunately I found this buck during my scouting evening along the road in between the pasture mentioned above and another pasture I’ve never walked. It had a compound fracture of a back leg and no sign of poaching so I feel comfortable saying it was an accidental road kill. Great mass, decent length, average genetics. In Kansas you must get permission to remove a found deer’s head from the local game warden. I didn’t think it was worth the work for a deer I didn’t kill, but apparently someone else did. The head was removed at night a few days later, despite being relatively hard to see from the road. I’m sure they didn’t call the warden and I know they had to trespass to get it. Classless.

I’ve carried a small game arrow around for years but I almost never use it. I’m always afraid a big buck is right around the corner just as I’m shooting… Sunday morning I was getting ready to pick up when 2 red squirrels started a racket in front of me. It proved to be a bad decision for the squirrels…

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About a month ago I was talking around the tailgate with friend and loyal reader CA-Chucky. Our trucks were parked at the edge of a flood and we needed to get to a water control gate a half mile away. I’d waded as far as I could get before getting to a drainage ditch that was way over my head. So I walked back and discussed the situation with my resident safety officer. CA-Chucky told me I was crazy, just leave it and come back when the water comes down, but I knew as soon as the water came down we would begin losing water, thus hurting our chances for killing ducks. So I borrowed an inflatable cooler and some rope and went back to the ditch. Theoretically CA was going to call for help if I got swept downstream. I tied the rope to my wrist and the other end to a tree, then I hugged the cooler and swam for it.

And last Saturday it was all worth it:

While CA was in a treestand another friend and I had a wonderful shoot. We shot mostly teal, but we killed a few big ducks and saw several bunches after we were done. A careful look would notice that there are also several doves in the picture! We got back to the trucks and noticed a couple dozen doves in the scrubby trees where we parked. I had a box of 8s that we split up and over the next 20 minutes we killed nearly a limit of doves. Then it was time for breakfast a, nap, and then it was back to the treestand.