Kansas newspapers are reporting that the man facing eight charges in connection with the alleged poaching of a potential state-record whitetail will have his day in Osage County District Court on March 29.

David V. Kent of Topeka was charged Feb. 1 with criminal discharge of a firearm, criminal hunting, hunting with an artificial light, hunting outside legal hours, hunting during a closed season, using an illegal caliber, hunting from a vehicle and without a valid deer permit. His trial was originally scheduled for March 1, but the judge granted a continuance.

Kent brought a 14-point rack to Topeka's inaugural Monster Buck Classic in late January to enter it in the show's big buck contest. He said he shot the deer with a rifle on Dec. 2 in Nemaha County.

Measurers with both Boone and Crockett and Buckmasters' Wayne Cox scored the rack, which was poised to be crowned the show's typical "king." By the B&C yardstick, the antlers' green score exceeded the current state-record Typical's score of 198 2/8 inches by 5/8 inch. The official BTR tally is 191 5/8 (with a composite score of 206 4/8), high enough not only to make it a state record, but also runner-up to the world record in our perfect/rifle category.

Authorities became suspicious when another man produced a trail camera photograph of the distinctive buck via his cell phone. The photo was taken in Osage County, about 80 miles from Nemaha. The headless carcass of a large buck had also been found near the property where the image was triggered.

Prior to his arrest, when asked by a BTR measurer if he'd taken the deer by illegal means, a jittery Kent said no. But he allegedly confessed when cornered by officers with the Kansas Dept. of Wildlife and Parks, who had already seized the antlers.

The KDWP contends the animal was poached in Osage County on the night of Nov. 11.

The poaching charges connected to this buck were enough to set tongues wagging throughout Kansas. And it wasn't long before newspaper reporters connected that dot to another, far more notorious case from 2007 to which Kent was tied.

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The last time Mark Huval thought enough of a buck to put an arrow through it, Louisiana folk were still reeling from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. There was a different president, a different pope, and gasoline cost $2.10 a gallon. Six years is a long time to wait for the right buck, especially if you're a bowhunter, and even more so if you're packing a 58-pound-draw recurve. The deer that finally won Mark's heart last season was probably born in 2005, the year he arrowed his last buck. He knew the animal well, too. He'd even waved goodbye to it the previous season, when it was a clean 5x5 with 40 or so less inches of antler. Mark is one of five people who hunt 1,200 acres adjacent to the 17,500-acre Lake Ophelia National Wildlife Refuge, which is shaped like a rubber ducky. He's made the 92-mile drive from Lafayette to Avoyelles Parish since 1991. He began his love affair with his Black Widow recurve four years before that. On the cold and rainy day after Christmas, a Monday, Mark donned his rain slicker, loaded his gear into a small boat and used a trolling motor to reach a homemade wooden ground blind only 300 yards from the refuge's border. The buck with a familiar face passed within SIX yards about 7:30.

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Deer hunters with unfilled tags and two days left to fill them aren't especially eager to see the great state of Kansas in their rearview mirrors. But when Jay Hickey realized southwest Arkansas was about to be hit by a rare southerly breeze, he couldn't click his heels and head home fast enough.

Not even the allure of a beefy and heavy antlered Kansas buck could keep his mind off a whitetail roaming his own ground, a deer so unique and big that he'd sworn the few people who knew about it to secrecy. He'd devoted 27 outings to that whitetail, and he thought a south wind might just be his ticket to the dance.

Jay's first glimpse of the extraordinary buck was via trail-camera photograph in November 2010. He hunted it diligently, but he never saw the mostly nocturnal animal on the hoof.

He continued his quest with both bow and muzzleloader in 2011, right up until the day he left to hunt the rut with an outfitter friend in Kansas.

The long drive home early that morning had given Jay heavy eyelids, but they snapped open when a doe exited the thicket he was watching, mainly because a much bigger deer was about 20 yards behind her.

It took some bleating to lure the doe close and a loud "MAAAHHH" to stop the buck before the brambles swallowed it, but Jay finally saw the Holy Grail in his crosshairs on the 28th day.

He, his brother Jimmy and a dear friend, Dr. Brian Bowen, recovered it the following morning.

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Chris Miraglia looked like one of George Romero's zombies when he staggered into his suburban Ohio home on Oct. 24, 2011. Had it not been for the goofy grin underneath his bloody and creviced brow, his wife might've screamed.

She almost did anyway.

"I got him! I stuck him good!" he mumbled, which, to her, sounded more like "I want to eat your brains!"

And then it registered: Chris had used "him" and "stuck" in the same sentence, which could mean only that he'd put an arrow through Big Boy, a buck with which her husband had become infatuated. But had he field-dressed it with his teeth?

"After I shot Big Boy and saw him lay down, I was hyperventilating," Chris explained. "I was so intent on keeping my eyes on him, I missed the last three steps on the ladder, went down and hit a tree face-first.

"I split my forehead wide open and was bleeding pretty profusely," he added. "I was too excited to even care."

Because Chris had literally been hunting in his back yard outside Canton, the last thing he wanted to do was push the buck out of the small copse of woods and onto a neighbor's lawn. So he slept fitfully and didn't return until the following morning.

The deer hadn't moved.

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