Dennis Dahlke would rather go home empty-handed than affix his tag to an adolescent buck, which is why he's been able to paper his wall with record book certificates.
Because he knows the bucks he hunts in Kansas routinely pack on another 20 or more inches of antler a year, especially after they've reached 4 years of age, the man from Bonner Springs passes up deer that would make other bowhunters drool.
Today's 160-incher can be next year's 180, he reasons.
In 2014, Dennis passed up a 20-yard shot at a buck with more potential than antler. He thought it was not yet mature, so he filmed it instead.
After reviewing the 15 minutes of footage that night, however, he realized the whitetail was much bigger than he thought, more impressive than trail camera photographs had indicated.
When opportunity knocked a second time the next morning, he didn't let it walk.
"After I had the buck scored, we measured the previous year's sheds," Dennis told me. "Estimating the worn-down brow tines at 1 and 1 1/2 inches, equating the broken P4 with the one from the other side, and narrowing the current spread by an inch, we came up with 164 inches. That meant the deer had packed on almost 19 inches from one year to the next."
The buck's BTR composite score is 182 7/8 inches. The full story will appear in the August issue of Rack magazine.