I'm in KS and was curious about this so I looked it up. I saw a Midwest Hunting Adventures in Missouri and a Midwest Whitetail Adventures in Clay Center KS was it one of those? I didn't see either showing as unreal of bucks as the pic you posted with a quick look. I know I haven't seen bucks like that on our place in KS they are doing something crazy to get antlers like that. Was it a high fence hunt?
I'm not interested in ever doing a hunt like that, just wondering who in KS is doing that. That looks more like some of the Texas high fence stuff I've seen advertised where deer are bred, contained, fed, and supplemented. I wasn't aware of any of that in KS yet but it could sure be happening and I hadn't heard about it.
I've hunted KS my whole life and have taken some nice whitetail but none that will gross 200". With the flat ground and roads around every section in a lot of KS a heck of a lot of deer get shot and hauled off by road hunters. Without a high fence managing a deal like that would be a heck of an undertaking. Roads aren't quite that thick where I hunt and it still happens. I once found a 21" wide 11pt buck down the road from my house while still hunting a creek one of my first years of hunting. He has been shot 3x by someone spotlighting off the road and went to the creek before dying. He was still warm so he must have been shot not long before daylight. A few years later I got spotlighted as I walked into my stand, I have never wanted to put a bullet through a spotlight so bad in my life but I refrained and ended up running back to my truck and getting close enough to write down their tag # and call them in.
KS has definitely been taken over by the foodplots, feeding, and supplementing. I was very slow to adopt those tactics myself but eventually had to when all the neighbors were doing it. It really never seemed to be that great of an advantage to me because everyone around me was doing it by the time I had to start. Maybe they saw some advantage by doing it early because before I started our fields and oak timbers that used to hold deer were no longer doing so by hunting season. Now that everyone is running buffets for the deer they seem to be spread out a lot like they were when nobody did food plots or feeders. All the added pressure from people in and out of the deer areas checking cameras, filling feeders, plus hunting has made the deer more nocturnal and in a lot of ways harder to hunt. I had to put in improved food sources just to have deer staying on our place instead of all being somewhere else by gun season. I still take a lot of my deer by glassing and intercepting them rather than stand hunting and watching feed. Knowing the terrain and travel patterns and sitting back with glass has worked better than intruding and educating them for me. I've learned those mature bucks that see as much pressure as they do in my area pattern hunters the same as hunters pattern them. Sometimes when the weather won't cooperate to get anything moving during daylight I use a still hunting/glassing hybrid method later in the season and try to get a buck snuck up on or jumped within range. Sometimes it even works.
I don't like the "new" hunting as well as I did the old methods but it is what it is. It isn't going to change so I had to. I try to be unpredictable using a mix of methods to catch up to a buck. I look forward to my DIY western hunts a lot more than deer season around home anymore. I get to see a lot of new and beautiful country and when I glass up a critter I can usually go after him.
I'm not interested in ever doing a hunt like that, just wondering who in KS is doing that. That looks more like some of the Texas high fence stuff I've seen advertised where deer are bred, contained, fed, and supplemented. I wasn't aware of any of that in KS yet but it could sure be happening and I hadn't heard about it.
I've hunted KS my whole life and have taken some nice whitetail but none that will gross 200". With the flat ground and roads around every section in a lot of KS a heck of a lot of deer get shot and hauled off by road hunters. Without a high fence managing a deal like that would be a heck of an undertaking. Roads aren't quite that thick where I hunt and it still happens. I once found a 21" wide 11pt buck down the road from my house while still hunting a creek one of my first years of hunting. He has been shot 3x by someone spotlighting off the road and went to the creek before dying. He was still warm so he must have been shot not long before daylight. A few years later I got spotlighted as I walked into my stand, I have never wanted to put a bullet through a spotlight so bad in my life but I refrained and ended up running back to my truck and getting close enough to write down their tag # and call them in.
KS has definitely been taken over by the foodplots, feeding, and supplementing. I was very slow to adopt those tactics myself but eventually had to when all the neighbors were doing it. It really never seemed to be that great of an advantage to me because everyone around me was doing it by the time I had to start. Maybe they saw some advantage by doing it early because before I started our fields and oak timbers that used to hold deer were no longer doing so by hunting season. Now that everyone is running buffets for the deer they seem to be spread out a lot like they were when nobody did food plots or feeders. All the added pressure from people in and out of the deer areas checking cameras, filling feeders, plus hunting has made the deer more nocturnal and in a lot of ways harder to hunt. I had to put in improved food sources just to have deer staying on our place instead of all being somewhere else by gun season. I still take a lot of my deer by glassing and intercepting them rather than stand hunting and watching feed. Knowing the terrain and travel patterns and sitting back with glass has worked better than intruding and educating them for me. I've learned those mature bucks that see as much pressure as they do in my area pattern hunters the same as hunters pattern them. Sometimes when the weather won't cooperate to get anything moving during daylight I use a still hunting/glassing hybrid method later in the season and try to get a buck snuck up on or jumped within range. Sometimes it even works.
I don't like the "new" hunting as well as I did the old methods but it is what it is. It isn't going to change so I had to. I try to be unpredictable using a mix of methods to catch up to a buck. I look forward to my DIY western hunts a lot more than deer season around home anymore. I get to see a lot of new and beautiful country and when I glass up a critter I can usually go after him.
