Well this must be a year for late success on my hunts--makes it worth hanging in there though. The weather, moon and rutting activity was all over the charts this year on our hunt in Kansas, and it was unpredictable patterning and seeing the deer.

I was hunting the second of three properties we have access to after all of us being skunked pretty bad at the first tract we hunted. It was one of the really cool mornings we were there, but not Kansas cold, around 24 starting out the day, around 6:00 AM. About 8:00 the deer started to really move, saw a little over a dozen in around 45 minutes. A group of 3 does filtered out of a head of woods, and then a funny looking 3 point buck came along a similar path, heading on a trail past my stand up into a small wooded draw. Almost immediately after the little 3 got within 100 yards of my stand, a big buck appeared out atop a ridge about 300 yards from my stand, his rack looked impressive skylighted along the top of the ridge! He only held there for a couple of seconds, I was already putting down my bino's after ranging him, and would have taken a shot at him right there, no question he was a shooter!

He dropped off the ridge, down a steep hill into the bottom the other deeer had filtered up from. He traveled in the ditches and in and out of the tree cover offering no good shot oppurtunities, fortunately he was getting closer as he came.....

The shot angle was getting steeper as he continued along though, he was in a bottom WELL below my stand. Finally, after about 15 minutes of heart pounding obvservation, he gave me a slight quartering to shot at about 140 yards. I focused on the point of the near shoulder through my scope, and at the break of the shot, I could see him buckle at the impact, he turned away and loped off toward the big head of woods about 100 yards behind him, he took two big leaps, and seemed to disappear--he couldn't have made the big woods that quick--could he????

I replayed the shot again and again in my mind, and afer about 15 minutes, I had taken all I could, and got down from my stand and started searching for a blood trail, or evidence of the hit. I had the spot marked well from my stand-- I have hunted this area many times. NO sign of a hit at all, I walked around 60 yards further to the edge of the big woods where there is a cattle wire which he would have jumped if he made it that far--looked up and down the wire, and no blood or evidence of him having jumped the fence.

I turned around and then saw him, he had only made it about 30 yards. He had taken his last loping hop over a little hillock in the bottom, and then crashed right there--huge amounts of blood there.

Due to work constraints, and a scope problem, I ended up taking my Sauer 202 lightweight 270 which was dialed in with 130 gr. Balllistic Tips. I usually like a little stouter/heavier bullet (140 AB i.e.) for these big Kansas bruisers, but this is what I had. I guess folks might call this a bullet 'blow up' as it was a perfect entry on the point of the shoulder, and no exit. We didn't due a full blown necropsy, but we did skin the buck to look for the bullet--or remnants of it. There was a spot on the off side rib cage about the size of a baseball that was just mush, you could feel where several ribs stopped and started on either side of this offside baseball sized spot. When we skinned the deer we saw several small exit spots in the carcass, I believe where fragments had exited, probably about 8 of them. In one of these wound channels, we found the plastic pin from the base of the ballistic tip--interesting.

Long story short the bullet did kill the deer efficiently, but that 15-20 min period of time searching for him without a blood trail was disheartening! The shot being about 140 yards with a 270 out of 20 inch barrel I did not think would create 'bullet shattering' speeds, at close range, to me under 75 yards, maybe there would be so much velocity that the bullet would perform as it did, maybe at 140 the big hard shoulders of these Kansas bucks is just too much on the entry for a BT to not fragment violently and possibly not give an exit, as in this case......

All in all, it was a tough hunt for the gang, I was fortunate to bag this big boy, he weighed over 250 lbs, and had been THROUGH the rut, and lost quite a bit of weight already.





Nice Ten point main frame, with some really gnarly stuff going on at the bases, split brow on one side, and had been one on the other, he broke it off fighting I suspect. His cape was a mess, he had been fighting so much, it looked like he had been saddled! Will have to buy a cape to mount him! He grossed 162, his net will be a good bit off of that, if his Left G-2 had matched his right--well......I think he will make an awesome looking mount, me and my Taxi picked a cool Meder form that is 'Upright Agressive' I'll be excited to see it in a year or so

Very nice deer!

Well done!

Congrats on a terrific buck!

That's a great buck! One odd thing I've noticed about the Kansas deer is that they are more brown-ish tan compared to the grey deer here.

Thanks guys-- I appreciate it.

You know Doc, you are right, I wonder if it's environmental, and they just look more like the CRP grass--a little browner than grey.....