The Big 9 (actually 11) from Kansas

The following post is the “deer story” about “The Big Nine” I harvested in Kansas in 2018. The entire story is very hard to tell in a 20 minute episode so here is the rest of the story. Enjoy!

This year was the first year that I’ve ever applied for an early season Muzzleloader tag in KS. After I was awarded the tag, I began to plan for the hunt and realized that it was going to be a lot different than most of my other hunts. Its mid-September, the whitetails are just coming out of velvet, and that is an odd time for the bucks in general. I say odd because of the way they begin to act once they shed their velvet. God created a buck very specifically to grow and act certain ways at different times of the year. A buck doesn’t shed his velvet until his testosterone level reaches a certain threshold in the fall after the antler growing process is complete. This is the same time that testosterone level causes them to split up their bachelor groups and become the loners that we hunt throughout the season. There is a real chance that a buck will live and feed in a certain area during the summer and early fall and then move miles away to a different area that he calls home after the velvet comes off. This was my worst fear going into my hunt. That he would leave me waiting for a ghost. 

September is also a time that the bucks are strictly on a feeding and bedding pattern. This pattern is mostly determined by the weather, and the temperature more specifically. I knew going into the hunt that the weather would be the most important factor for our success. Also, when the bucks are on a feeding and bedding pattern they have a much smaller home range than during the rut. There is very little chance to catch a wandering buck coming by your stand location. You generally have to be within 40 acres or so of his core area to even get him on trail camera during this time of year. I knew going into the hunt, the bucks we had on trail camera would be the bucks we were going to have a chance to kill, and if we ended up having no shooter bucks on trail camera then we would most likely have no shooter bucks to hunt during this early season. 

Luckily for us, we had two shooter bucks frequenting our cameras leading up to the hunt. “Boogie” a deer that is a gross Boone and Crockett sized animal was at the top of our hit list. However, our past history with him left us to believe he was only 4.5 years old, and if there was ever a deer that we hoped would not show his face and make it one more year, it was him. But, we were hunting a smaller lease that is outfitted heavily by the neighbor on one side. So we made the decision that if he stepped out, we better shoot. The chances were much higher that he would be killed on the neighbor’s property during the rut when he got dumb for love. The other mature buck we had on camera was a deer that we named “The Big Nine” because he was simply a main frame 9 point. When thinking about who he was last year, we decided that he was the same deer that was seen in the same area at the end of the season as a mainframe 8 point. Similar rack characteristics and he hadn’t grown much, so we placed him on the hit list.

When deciding how to hunt these bucks based on where we knew they were feeding and where we thought they were bedding, we concluded that it was going to be impossible to hunt these deer in the morning without running them off before daylight getting to our stand locations. Afternoon hunts were going to be our best shot and we would spend the morning hunts glassing from a distance or hunting different parts of the farm hoping to get lucky. 

Day 1 of the hunt…

We’re heading into our stand location with the temperature on the truck reading 97 degrees. It was not looking good to see any deer moving before dark but we were pleasantly surprised to see some does come out at last light. That gave us a chance to work off some of the “ring rust” from being away all season and get back into the groove of filming and preparing for a shot if that would have been one of the shooters. When the first doe stepped out I actually started shaking a little like it was a shooter. It finally felt like hunting season was here. I thought we might actually get to shoot a big buck! It was a welcomed feeling. 

The next few days…

The next five days brought more of the same long, hot walks into the stand in the afternoon with one day actually reaching 100 degrees on the truck thermometer and very little deer movement. I then started to wonder if hunting in September was a good idea after all. One evening we returned to the truck at dark and the thermometer read 87 degrees. I told the Whitetail TV producer and editor, Justin Fabian, who was also on the hunt, that we would be in a lot better shape if that thermometer read 67.  We needed a cold front to come through badly and we happened to be getting one the next day.  Anticipation was high for the next few days of hunting, but we were down to only one shooter buck now. We noticed on trail camera that “Boogie” had managed to break about 25 inches of tines off of his rack. He would get a free pass from us and we could only hope he breaks off a lot more to keep the neighbors from killing him later. 

Day 6.

A storm was going to roll through our area during the last hour of daylight on Friday evening but the radar showed the rain was going to miss us so we made the decision to give it a shot and see if the cold front would cause the big buck to get on his feet to feed a little earlier than usual. Boy did we mess up. After a long walk in with all the gear, we had just gotten setup when the bottom fell out of one of the worst storms I have ever been in on a hunt and we abandoned the hunt for fear of ruining the camera equipment and/or getting blown out of the tree left to hang from our safety harnesses. 

Day 7.

That afternoon, the wind had switched out of the NE and it was 73 degrees going to the stand. I were more excited for that hunt than I have been in a long time. The temp had dropped 25 degrees in 24 hours, but the wind had also switched so our old stand setup was going to be no good. We were going to have to adapt. There was no way to shoot the edge of the bedding area that the big nine came out of to feed with a muzzleloader unless we were laying in the middle of a cut milo field, 150 yards off of the timber. We thought about digging a pit but that wasn’t possible since the field being used for farming. But our buddy Nick Andrews had a creative idea.  He said we should lay in a group of goose or turkey decoys because both species visited the field from time to time. We went to searching around the camp and found 6 dust covered turkey decoys, including a full strut Tom turkey decoy, that must have been 10 years old. The strutting decoy was perfect for hiding Justin and the camera setup. That afternoon we got everything in place in the field and going over dry runs on what to do with the camera if he stepped out here or there. And then a doe walks out. She actually saw me testing my ability to raise up from lying flat on my back to shoot, but the turkey decoy spread worked perfectly. She assumed we were a bunch of turkeys moving around and went back to eating. She eventually got curious enough about us to walk over within bow range and finally decided she didn’t like what she was looking at and left. Luckily, she left going across the field away from the bedding area, so our hunt wasn’t messed up. We knew the big nine could step out any minute. 

During the course of our hunt we got a text from Nick, who was hunting a different farm, that he had just killed a buck named “Twisted” after stalking him in a Milo field. We were pumped and now readier than ever for the big nine to step out but as it got closer to dark our spirits were let down as he never showed up. Right at dark, two does stepped out and immediately questioned our decoy spread and began to walk over to us to investigate further. It was past the limit for good camera light to shoot a buck so we were just going to hold tight until they left then pack up and head back to camp. That was until the big doe started stomping and blowing at us…. I made the quick decision (with Justin’s approval) to execute for that nonsense. I raised up and squeezed the shot off. When the smoke cleared I assumed she dropped until I watched the camera footage. I missed her! What! I don’t miss deer with a gun…. Period. Well, I missed on the first shot at the big deer I killed in Oklahoma last year, but we’re not counting that one lol. I didn’t understand how I missed and of course, blamed the muzzleloader but that’s what everyone does. It’s usually dead on, but I was going to skip the morning hunt in order to shoot the gun to see. 

Day 8.

The next morning proved that I was right and the gun was off and was somehow shooting 7 inches high at 100 yards and I had shot over her back. I re-sighted it, licked my wounds and prepared for the afternoon hunt. I decided to go to a different farm because of all the pressure we had put on the big nine the past week as well as blasting away at a doe at dark yesterday. 

One of my buddies there in Kansas agreed to watch that spot from a distance to see if the big nine showed for some reason before dark. Low and behold, I get a text at 6:57pm that read “the big nine is on his feet 75 yards from the trail camera.” Figures he would show up in the daytime when I wasn’t there.  After the hunt that night we began discussing why he would show up then but never when we were hunting. We decided that he or another deer were seeing us on our approach to the stand while they were bedded and it was messing up the hunt. We were crossing an open field to get to the stand location in the edge of the milo because it would be difficult to get all the gear in going through the milo. I was going to be self-filming because Justin had to leave but I was going to fight the Milo and enter that way to see if that made a difference. It was a good thing I did because I didn’t even get all the way my spot in the milo before noticing some does already out feeding in the field. They would have blown the whole place out if they would have seen me crossing the open field. Once I finally got setup in my spot in the milo, the does had moved to feeding at the edge of the near the trail camera. 

I was laying on my stomach on the ground sticking out of the milo filming them down the edge when all of a sudden, the does started backpedaling like they had seen the boogeyman in the milo when out bounded the big nine. Fifty seconds and a well-placed shot later you could see a white belly laying on the edge of the milo when the smoke cleared. After 8 days of hard hunting, the big 9 was down and it was time to celebrate. I immediately picked up my phone and called Justin, Cole and Nick to tell them a deer story. The big 9 (actually 11) who ended up scoring 144 inches, is already processed and ready for the grill, and it’s not even October yet.