KS 2013

[Hoyt4]

Great hunt and story.

Nothing to do with APR.

[sticknstring]

Kansas has some nice deer without any APR mainly due to it is mostly private land and it is hard to get access down there.

By in large, KS bucks are allowed to reach maturity. Having gun seasons outside of November are a huge contributor.

[InTheNorthwoods]

Great hunt and story.

Nothing to do with APR.

No, but it does have everything to do with the fact every Tom, Dick & Harry can't get OTC buck tags to hunt during the rut while party hunting. Big deer are mature deer, no matter what state you hunt in. APR is just one way of allowing deer to mature.

Said it before; but great story. Thanks for sharing.

[certified jumbo]

Impressive. Congrats to the three of you!!

Also curious if you mount it are you going to leave it as is or have taxidermist reconstruct the antler. Either way would be cool. My neighbor had his taxi rebuild one whole side that broke off and cannot tell it was fixed.

[slimngrizzly]

Absolutely fabulous story Trav! Well written too! I think your rack looks even better in person! Way to go! Couldn't have happened to nicer guys!

Dont forget... you know a couple other knuckle-headed tag-a-longs who would come next year if they had to! And we like celebrating big bucks all the time!! Cheers!

[triggertrav]

Thanks everyone for your great comments. It was great re-living the story as i wrote it and it takes some time on my end - and i want to put a thanks out to all the others that do the same. You are the guys that got me into this, so thank you also.

And to answer a couple questions.

We were fortunate enough to find private land.

They all scored great! All three were our personal bests

My wife is a little bummed about the 2 new mounts. She feels that putting them in our bed room is a little weird, but she will get used to sleeping downstairs.

Any my brother is getting his horns rebuilt. We have enough pictures of the animal, the taxi will get it spot on.

Thanks again.

[Swiftswamper]

can we hear the scores

[triggertrav]

Scores are in:

Any guesses???

Brothers - big non typical

Mine - 14 score-able points

Buddies - main frame 10, with the split G2.

[Bear55]

Scoring your brothers rack full or broken?

[triggertrav]

both - we know the score of the busted, but wont have a score on the fixed for a few weeks. i will put pics of that up when completed also.

[Bear55]

Shooting off the hip and going with a theme of 5's

195 (175 busted)

175

155

[Stcloudangler]

Don't care. You are one lucky group. Congrats, and thanks for putting this on here. I hope to try something like this one day myself.

[Musky Buck]

Great stories and pictures.

[Black Bear]

Thanks for the work you put into the thread. A really great job. Positively not trying to start anything but I have to ask. Was bait used? As I believe it is legal in KS. Another HSOforum showcases KS hunts and the deer are on video being shot over bait. Not trying to start anything, just curious. Again, just curious and not judging.

[ozzie]

I will go out on a limb and say that bait was not used...they didn't know even where they were going to put up stands let alone feed them long enough for the deer to realize bait was there. Plus it sounded like the land had plenty of natural food sources to hunt around. Baiting works best if the deer are use to coming to a certain spot day after day for long periods of time not the show up in the woods and dump a bag of corn and the deer suddenly show up.

[triggertrav]

Correct ozzie! No bait used.

Just hunt the funnel, pinches, corridors on the downwind side with the rut running full tilt (and not having guns blazing changes things quite a bit also). Again, we (us 3 that won the KS deer lottery) still are in awe on how this worked.

[Gofishleech]

Are we going to see the scores? Did I miss them?

[triggertrav]

scores -

Brothers - 171 5/8

Mine - 169 5/8

Buddies - 152 3/8

[Bear55]

Darn should have went with a theme of zeros. Any idea how much antler your brothers buck might have busted off?

[triggertrav]

Yeah - you would have been dang near right on.

I am guessing my brothers deer is missing close to 40 inches. we will put a tape on him when he is fixed.

[Gofishleech]

Thanks for the scores, awesome story and pics. That is a dream hunt for sure.

[Coach1310]

Once again, CONGRATS, what a great hunt. Also, thanks a bunch for sharing it. It allows us everyday joe's to enjoy the trips along with you! I know you had mentioned private land.... did you just do a bunch of door knocking and get permission or did you have a connection. I am curious only because you hear the stories of all private land is either reserved for family or leased up by folks and land that holds deer like this has to be a hot commodity!!

Thanks again for sharing.