David Ramey of Cartersville, Georgia, doesn’t mind breaking a sweat while deer hunting, as long as he’s in Kansas with a bug machine. The roughly $555 nonresident price tag — for the license and a deer tag — isn’t cheap, but his hunting spot was.
Anybody can hunt it.
David and his brother, H.J., found the public land through a GPS-synced hunting app. The place was new to them, although they’d been making the long westward drive for three seasons.
In 2020, they arrived early in order to scout the 300-acre property they’d found on their phones. Duly impressed with the natural funnel between milo and alfalfa fields, they hauled in two 16-foot ladder stands. The funnel was surrounded by food, water and CRP bedding cover.
The brothers Ramey spent opening day of the Sept. 14-27 season at a WMA with which they were already familiar. Experience had taught them the place received almost no pressure that early in the year, when the temperature can reach 100 degrees. They went to their newly erected ladder stands the next day.
Thirty minutes into the early-season muzzleloader hunt, David heard a deer approaching. When he connected the footfalls to their maker, the buck was only 50 yards from his ladder stand.
Clearly, the deer was far bigger than the 150-inch Kansas 10-pointer he’d taken during a previous season.
“When H.J. and I put up the ladder, we cut a small shooting lane about 10 yards from my stand to allow me to shoot toward either of two intersecting trails. When the buck stepped into that lane, it lifted his head and looked right at me,” he told John E. Phillips, who’s writing the story for Rack magazine.
“I don’t usually take head-on shots, but this buck was so close that I figured I might not get a better angle,” he added.
David centered his crosshairs on the animal’s beefy chest and squeezed the trigger. Smoke obscured his post-shot view, but he heard the animal fleeing the scene, which worried him a little.
He needn’t have wrung his hands, however, because the deer managed to stay on its feet for only 40 yards. It wound up scoring 206 2/8 inches.
“Very few hunters take advantage of this blackpowder season, when the temperature is usually between 80 and 100 degrees. The bugs are awful, too. H.J. and I quickly learned the importance of using a Thermacell,” David said.
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