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 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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I closed up the office mid-afternoon yesterday and bowhunted the last couple of hours. I passed on this little 7 and a few does. Not much action but the wind was awful, swirling as it went from NNW to S.

This morning I tried a different stand because I was hoping the wind would stay out of the south. I saw a couple of does and a couple of buttons. Note the turnips, wheat, and clover they’re eating:

Then mid-day I was checking the football scores and grabbing a late breakfast when these guys tooled by the front porch!

I’ve had an absolutely awful docket this week. I’ll be in the field all next week, which means double duty now. Unfortunately that means I have nothing to write about. Fortunately I’ve made the acquaintance of some excellent hunters who are willing to share their stories with you all.

This story goes back to last year when a gentleman tracked me down and asked for some advice on a specific public area that I’d spent some time on over the years. He and his partner were coming down Minnesota for a chance to chase big Kansas whitetails. I helped to the extent I could and he was nice enough to share his pictures and stories with me.

This year he’s already got a Minnesota buck in the freezer but it’s not his. It’s his 10 year old son Jace’s! I know, crazy right? I was 16 before I killed a buck and it was another 5 years before I killed a deer with my bow. Frankly, I wasn’t strong enough at that age to shoot a bow. And this wasn’t just some random thing, he targeted this buck. They scouted it, had trail cam photos of it, and put him on the “hit list”. When the deer presented a good 20 yard broadside he took care of business with a perfect shot with a He was using a Diamond Razor Edge at 33lbs. Sounds like he had some good coaching…

P&Y 36 6/8!

Apparently this would not have been possible in Minnesota until just recently. In the last year the state has started allowing 10 and 11 year olds to hunt alongside an adult. What a fantastic opportunity to get young bowhunters in the field! Hopefully Jace and his father will have all the kinks worked out before my own daughter is old enough…

Very cool, congrats!

… but not a Kansas buck. I hunted today and have no good story to tell. But dihardhunter over at The Outdoor Smorgasbord scored on a great public land buck in Alabama. As usual, he tells a good story and takes great pictures. Take a look here.

Yesterday I got done with work early enough to climb up in a stand closer to town. Before long a young button buck came in and absolutely mowed down the food plot. Turnips, wheat, rye, whatever… he was going to town!

He had the largest buttons I think I’ve ever seen. Usually around here it can be hard to even tell a button from a doe. This guy’s got 3 inch bases!

Anyway, he hung around for at least 30 minutes before a spike, doe and fawn came and ran him off. Then another spike wandered by. Finally right before dark I laid eyes on my first no-doubt shooter of the Kansas season. He was working a scrape line 230 yards off and never headed my way, but I bet it won’t be the last time I see him. The light was bad enough I couldn’t get a picture but I think there’s a chance he may be Big 9 from last year.

Parker Madl, a 17-year-old high school senior from Stilwell, Kan., didn’t have long to wait or far to go to find the deer of a lifetime. On opening day of the Kansas archery season, the Blue Valley High School wrestling star—the reigning state champion in his weight division—shot this 20-point buck from a tree house on his family’s property. The deer green scores 228.

From Field and Stream.

I started hearing about this buck not long after it was killed. See I went to Blue Valley, my parents still live in Stilwell, and I even vaguely know the Madl family. Rumors regarding the specifics have been hard to come by but it sounds like they’d been watching this buck all summer come to a feeder. He was stuck on opening day, allegedly not more than a couple of miles from where I stuck my 2008 Kansas buck.

Wow, just wow.