Well, Monday morning was spent sleeping in. The landowner - Brad Harris - was confident that the best decision would be too avoid disturbing the deer in the morning and make Monday evening an absolute ambush to put some deer on the ground. During the day, we hung a few more stands for hunting in the mornings.

One thing Kansas should be famous for is the abundance of ‘hedge’ or Osage orange trees. I can guarantee you that no deer in its right mind would be bedding under one of these jokers.

Oh yea, the ever-present coyotes too.

Not a night went by that the coyotes were not howling our exits from the treestands. Also, I was surprised how many owls we heard also. They would hoot a couple of times just prior to dusk almost every evening.

Well, let’s get to the stand. My first evening hunt was not exactly what I had dreamed about….I got skunked! I didn’t even get a sniff of a deer. I hunted a tall loc-on treestand that I nicknamed the “Widowmaker”. Not only was the treestand pushing its way into the 30 foot tall range, there was this bona fide widowmaker propped against the big cottonwood about 20 feet above the stand’s position.

Here was a shot of the bean fields behind the stand. The timber to the right was actually about a 10 acre island of timber that sat within the bean field and would prove to be more productive as the week went on, but for tonight…nothing happening.

Fortunately, not everyone had as bad luck as I did. Dad saw a basket racked 8 pointer and 5 does before the evening was over. He was hunting out of a Double Bull blind about a mile down the riverbottom. He had a bit of a scare at dusk when a raccoon tried to come in the blind with him, but both raccoon and dad are healthy and un-marred.

One of dad’s buddies was in town hunting about 30 minutes down the road and connected a true stud Monday night. After several nights of scouting, the big buck was patterned. Plan worked to perfection and the result was a 160 class 9 point with 14.5″ G2s and a holstein-ish body that weighed around 270 pounds!

Also, Outdoor Insights was in town shooting some video for their television series on the Pursuit Channel.  One of the hunter/cameraman tandems passed up a 120″ish 8 pointer at the lengthy distance of 15 yards, but the other crew tagged this nice 10 pointer (with 3 kickers).  Had a pretty stout inside spread, just lacking a bit on tine length.

It was a great deer, but he had some medical problems.  Check out the wild hoof on this guy.  It was about the size of a softball and was leaking some pus from between where the hooves and dewclaws are located.  He could have been an EHD survivor as it appeared that there could have been some hoof sloughing occurring, but more likely a injury or inflamed joint was the cause of the problem.

Regardless, tune in to the Outdoor Insights television show and check out this great Kansas buck!