Big Buck 411 Blog

Good Things Come

Good Things Come

By Mike Handley

Travis Stites of Phillipsburg, Kansas, knew the family ground he was hunting was home to at least one great buck. He'd seen it once on the hoof and in trail camera photographs.

"At the beginning of October, I was checking new spots on some family land and walked over a creek bank. This deer stood up and headed straight away from me," he said.

Following that jaw-unhinging encounter, Travis put out a trail camera and checked it often. Just when he thought he must have run the deer out of county, he retrieved an image of the buck with a doe.

"This guy was in the background," he said.

Travis hung a stand in a little finger of woods jutting into a milo field. He picked that spot because he'd glassed deer moving through there while scouting.

The tree he chose only allowed him to climb 12 feet off the ground, but he thought it offered the best vantage point whenever the wind was cooperative. Wind direction was crucial, he decided.

If conditions weren't perfect, he would avoid the setup.

He was sitting in that 12-foot-high stand for only the third time that year on the afternoon of Nov. 22. When a small buck passed within bow range, Travis took note of the trail and even picked a shooting lane at 28 yards. The buck he wanted, which has a BTR composite score of 210 5/8 inches, came strolling down the same trail an hour later.

If the 18-pointer Travis skewered was a 3 1/2-year-old, as the taxidermist who mounted it claims, it might well have been one of those rare whitetails with the potential to become a gargantuan buck.

Not that the bowhunter has any regrets whatsoever. Facing a 200-plus wild deer in the red zone was certainly enough to fan his flame.

Make that anyone's flame.

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Kansas Anime: William Cantillon / BTR Composite Score: 199 1/8

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