Hope, Optimism and Redemption with Kansas Whitetails

When hunting mature Kansas bucks, the line between agony and elation is often razor-thin.

November 29, 2024 By John Taranto

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It was opening morning of the Kansas firearm deer season, and there was a very real chance that a whitetail buck larger than any I’d seen in my life stood less than 200 yards away. I had just entered a box blind set on the ground atop a sandy knoll, and if I had spooked any deer at the nearby feeder on my walk in, I hadn’t heard them run off. So far so good, I figured.

By headlamp light, I carefully extracted from my pack anything I might need to have close at hand for the duration of the hunt and gently set it on the spare metal folding chair inside the blind. I grabbed the already loaded detachable box magazine, inserted it into my Mossberg Patriot and slowly racked a round into the chamber, attempting to time it with the rhythmic creaking of a nearby pump jack.

The late-November air seemed to cool a few degrees as the eastern horizon transitioned from ink black to graphite. As additional light slowly infiltrated the prairie sky, I could start to make out the profile of a 40-gallon-drum deer feeder positioned against a row of red cedars and cottonwoods 150 yards to the north. I could also just barely discern the outlines of several whitetails milling about, munching on corn and milo that had spilled from the feeder or had been dumped on the ground.

Eventually, shooting light revealed that the breakfast club consisted of antlerless deer and immature bucks only. I studied them intently through my binocular and attempted to keep track of them as they filtered into and out of the cedars. Occasionally, a larger buck would arrive on the scene, but for most of the first hour, no shooters—not by Ted Jaycox’s definition of the term anyway—materialized.

LAND OF GIANTS

Jaycox’s Tall Tine Outfitters (talltine.com) has been operating out of the small town of Protection, Kan., for more than two decades (he also offers hunts for Osceola turkeys in his home state of Florida and hosts hunters in Old Mexico for Gould’s and ocellated turkeys as well as Coues deer). Part of the reason Jaycox’s Kansas whitetail operation is so successful is due to his strict 150-inch-minimum rack score requirement. You shoot a buck on one of Ted’s leases that doesn’t meet the minimum, you pull out the checkbook. Adding to the pressure, a hunt with Tall Tine is a solo hunt, meaning there’s no guide alongside you to greenlight taking a shot. It’s entirely up to the hunter to score any potential target buck on the hoof, and Jaycox has a pretty good system for doing that.

gaf-shed-pile — A pile of sheds outside the old farm house that serves as Tall Tine’s camp gives hunters an early indication of the caliber of whitetail they’ll be hunting. (John Taranto)

First, the system assumes that mature bucks on the properties Ted hunts carry mass and spread measurements that total an average of 90 inches. Again, this is based on decades of experience. So, if the upright tines—brow, G2, G3, G4, etc.—add up to 60 inches in length, the buck should meet the 150-inch minimum. Therefore, it’s up to the hunter to count and attempt to estimate the length of each tine, which ideally takes place as the buck feeds idly at a bait pile. Other times, though, this must occur as the buck walks with purpose through a small shooting window against a busy backdrop at a distance that is not conducive to quick math. As you might imagine, good glass is mandatory.

As the dozens of framed photographs of happy hunters posing with monster bucks hanging on the walls of Ted’s dining room indicate, many hunters have had no problem closing the deal over the years. But as fruitless morning and evening sits add up over the course of a five-day hunt, self-doubt builds within the unsuccessful hunter with every passing meal. It’s difficult to enjoy a plate of chicken and biscuits or a slice of chocolate cream pie with so many hunters and deer gazing down on you in judgment in your most vulnerable hours.

Last fall was my ninth as a Kansas resident. When my family and I relocated to my wife’s hometown of Wichita from the East Coast in October of 2015, I naively dreamed of annual encounters with big Kansas whitetails. But, going into my hunt with Tall Tine the week after Thanksgiving last year, the only deer I’d killed in the Sunflower State was a button buck I whacked on the way home from dinner one night a few years ago. Kansas may be the land of giants, but much of that land is out of the reach of hunters on a magazine editor’s salary.

gaf-bail-blind — Blinds at Tall Tine Outfitters take many forms and typically offer hunters concealment within shooting range of a feeder. (John Taranto)

In fact, last fall was my second consecutive season hunting with Ted. In 2022, I saw more deer in a five-day span than I’d seen in my life to that point, including several bucks that would easily score in the 140s. For a guy who grew up hunting deer in central New York, where a buck that scored in the 130s would be cause for a parade, it was thrilling to see so many big bucks ... and maddening to let them all walk.

MIND GAMES

Anticipation for the week ahead was high as I lost count of the deer visiting that feeder set against the cedars and cottonwoods. After an hour, movement in the far corner of the pasture caught my attention. As the buck slowly worked its way toward the feeder, briefly appearing and then disappearing as it navigated the rises in the terrain and the tall grass, my pulse quickened. Even to the naked eye and several hundred yards distant, this appeared to be a buck that could hit the 150 mark, so I took up my bino to start the field-judging process. It looked like a buck Ted had described to me at dinner the night before, but there was still some doubt in my mind. I grabbed my phone and texted him.

Me: Buck over in the northeast corner of the pasture. Appears to be a 9, but mass for days. Need him to get closer for a better look at tine length.

Ted: He will come.

The buck never reemerged from the trees. That opening morning hunt last fall was typical of the 10 hunts I’d experienced in 2022 when hunting with Ted and would be similar in story arc and outcome to the sits that would occur over the course of the subsequent couple of days. Each began with hope and optimism, featured numerous dramatic twists throughout and ended in a cliffhanger that left the audience (i.e. me) with more questions than answers.

HANGE OF SCENERY

On the afternoon of my third day in camp last fall, I followed Ted to a property I’d not hunted before. The box blind where I would spend the afternoon was set in an overgrown pasture a couple hundred yards north of the property line, roughly 100 yards from two different bait piles at my 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock and within shouting distance of some ranch hands working on a tractor (I’m still not sure what they were shouting about).

gaf-small-buck — Whitetails have ample room to roam in the country surrounding Protection, Kan. The author first spotted this buck when it was more than a mile away. (John Taranto)

It was the first day of December, but the bright mid-afternoon sun and above-average temps made it feel more like late September. Despite the noise and the heat, two does hopped the fence at the property line and cautiously approached the 2 o’clock bait no more than 15 minutes after I’d gotten settled inside the blind. While I was watching them and waiting to see if a buck might follow, three does and a young buck showed up at the 10 o’clock pile. Over the course of the next hour and a half, the activity was steady. Deer walked to and from the bait piles, others chased each other through the trees on the opposite side of the fence and one young 6-point even snuck up behind my blind and walked within 20 yards of me on its way to the bait. It was a head-on-a-swivel kind of afternoon.

Around 4 o’clock, although by then I was mostly desensitized to the constant presence of deer, a loud noise in the timber on the neighboring property snapped my head to attention. I trained my bino in the direction I thought the noise was coming from and spotted a buck absolutely thrashing a cluster of low-hanging, leafless branches attached to a honey locust. A screen of brush prevented me from getting an unobstructed view of the buck’s rack, but it was obvious this was a mature deer that could very well be a candidate for a bullet should it decide to hop the fence.

After roughing up the branches for another minute or so, the buck walked deeper into the timber and out of sight. By now, there were deer seemingly everywhere on the other side of the fence, and it was difficult to tell if any of the flashes of hide or sets of legs I could see belonged to the buck. It was like the hat shuffle game they play on the scoreboard at a baseball game, only 100 times harder.

I could feel the anxiousness building inside me as I scanned the timber for the buck, so I shifted my attention to a group of three does feeding at the 2 o’clock bait in an attempt to calm my nerves. After a few minutes, all three raised their heads simultaneously and stared in the direction of the 10 o’clock pile. I slowly shifted my attention that way in time to see the big buck jump the fence and make a beeline to the bait. The rack, finally unobstructed, was a typical 10-point with good width and mass and plenty of upright inches. No need to dust off the mental abacus for this one.

gaf-trophy-jt-img_6930_flat — The author’s buck, a textbook 10-point, was one of dozens of deer he saw during an early December afternoon hunt. (John Taranto)

I waited until he reached the bait and lowered his head to grab a bite before I raised my rifle and rested the forearm on the padded window frame. After clicking off the safety, I trained the crosshair on the buck’s chest and waited for him to turn broadside. My first shot hit him squarely, but he turned and began walking straight at me. I fired again, hitting him in the chest, and he dropped on the spot, disappearing into the waist-high grass.

Several minutes passed before my full-body convulsions eased to moderate shaking and I was able to peck out a text to Ted that simply said, “Buck down.”

LONE RANGER

Incredibly bright and lightweight, Swarovski’s EL Range 10x32 is in a class of its own.

gaf-sidebar-binos — (Photo courtesy of SWAROVSKI OPTIK)

High-quality optics are not just a luxury on a hunt like this. They are a necessity. When attempting to add up inches of antler in your head while gazing at a prospective target buck as it meanders through the timber or into and out of cuts and coulees, you want the clearest, brightest glass you can afford. And if you can afford to drop $3,000 on a range-finding binocular, look no further than the Swarovski EL Range 10x32 ($2,999; swarovskioptik.com).

This latest addition to the EL Range family features the brightest, sharpest, clearest glass I’ve ever seen in a rangefinding bino, with none of the tinting that’s present in many competitors’ offerings. And weighing just 25 ounces, it’s considerably lighter in weight than most rangefinding binos. This is due in part to the smaller 32 mm objective lenses. In some brands’ binos, opting for diminutive objectives to save weight typically means sacrificing low-light performance, but that is not the case here. The integrated rangefinder delivers distances out to 1,640 yards in less than half a second.