By Mike Handley

With maps in hand and a tank full of gas, this truckload of Texans discovered what public ground in Kansas has to offer.

Photo: Marc Barnes of Gainesville, Texas, broke a 10-year jinx by tagging this buck on his maiden trip to Kansas. And he did it on public ground!

Judging from the drool stains on the truck’s upholstery, you’d think that a pack of St. Bernards had crowded into the vehicle with Texas plates.

Instead, it was a few friends with time on their hands, driving around and looking for deer on the day before the 2006 Kansas firearms season opened. And if anyone had been behind Marc Barnes and his pals that morning on the Jewell County roadway, they’d have rear-ended the truck that came to a screeching halt about 7:30.

Seeing a world-class whitetail with a rack sporting a sapling-thick drop tine is reason enough to risk whiplash and an increase in auto insurance premiums. The sighting left the group of Texans slack-jawed and eager to begin their planned weeklong hunt.

Marc, who had never hunted in Kansas before, didn’t care if they saw anything else. Totally smitten with that buck, he was prepared to stare at the same 4-acre woodlot for days on end — forsaking it for only a motel room pillow.

“Y’all do whatever y’all want to do, but I’m gonna park my butt right here … for the whole week, if that’s what it takes,” he quickly told his friends.

The next day, Nov. 29, Marc left Belleville and returned to that spot in his own truck. After parking, he followed a fencerow for about 500 yards to a hillside that would afford a good vantage point. He didn’t bother taking any kind of stand.

From his position, he could keep an eye on the oak and cedar thicket he suspected deer might use as a bedding area. Otherwise, the land was fairly open.

It was 17 degrees, and there was nothing to break the 30-mph wind that assaulted Marc’s clothing like a dog looking for a scrap of meat. He was wearing almost every stitch he’d brought.

Not long after daybreak, Marc spotted a doe at the edge of the thicket. A bit later, he saw a forkhorn. He saw a third, bigger-bodied deer about 7:30, noticed what had to be a drop tine, and then realized he was looking at the same buck that had stolen his breath — at the exact same time — the previous morning.

“What are the odds of that happening?” he said, incredulously. “That deer was obviously locked into a routine, thank God.”

Marc couldn’t ponder the irony at the time, however, because his brain had turned to mush. He might’ve begun babbling incoherently if not for his hunter’s instincts.

The buck was only 100 yards away, a “gimmee” for Marc’s 7mm magnum under ordinary circumstances.

As if this were ordinary!

“I was shaking so badly … If I hadn’t had a bipod on my gun, I’d have missed the deer … I get that way. It doesn’t matter what I hunt.

“I hunt coyotes back home, and even a coyote gets me shook up,” he added. “You can imagine what that deer did to me.”

When Marc first brought his rifle up, he realized that he needed to scoot backward about 10 feet in order to firmly plant the bipod’s legs on the ground.

“I thought I’d spooked it, at first,” he said. “I tried to keep my eyes on the deer as I moved, but I lost sight of it at one point and figured I’d blown my chance. I was actually mad at myself … until I realized that the buck was still right there.”

Crosshairs covered it in a heartbeat.

When the buck didn’t fall after the shot, Marc fired again. Even then, the buck just started to walk away — as if nothing had happened. It took a third 120-grain bullet to anchor it.
Marc’s buddy, Darren Evans, watched the whole episode from another ridge about 500 yards distant.

“I’m not going back up there with those light loads any more,” says Marc. “In Texas, that cartridge will handle any deer I come across. But those in Kansas are huge. I did not realize I was going to be shooting a small elk!”

Not that he would know. It had been at least a decade since the 51-year-old had shot a deer.
Since he was hunting one of Kansas’ WIHAs (walk-in hunting areas), it took four guys to drag Marc’s estimated 300-pound buck to the truck.

“It was unbelievable,” Marc said. “Even its feet looked like a calf’s feet.”

Weight wasn’t the only surprise awaiting Marc when he walked up to the downed deer. He’d seen only one drop tine, but the thick set of antlers also sported a matching kickstand.

While the gang of nonresident hunters was admiring the loaded animal, a high school-age kid drove up to get a gander at it. He told them that local hunters had been hunting that buck for four years. He asked them if he could call his dad, Roger, so he also could see it up close.

When Roger arrived, he struck up a friendship with the Texas boys. Not only did he offer to let them hang the deer in his barn for the rest of the week, but he also gave them a furnished farmhouse to call camp for the remainder of their visit (they’d planned on staying the entire week in a motel).

“Those folks were super nice, and they didn’t know us from Adam,” Marc said. “Roger’s wife even brought a pot of soup one day.”

The group cut short their full week when everyone tagged out with either nice bucks or does. They were caravanning back to Gainesville, Texas, before the weekend was in full swing.

They’re all hooked on Kansas deer hunting and hospitality. Going through the application process, paying the nonresident fees and driving eight or nine hours are a small price to pay to hunt in paradise.

“In four days, we saw between 250 and 300 deer. I personally saw 62, and 17 of those were bucks. Six of the bucks were what I’d call wallhangers,” says Marc. “And believe it or not, we saw more pheasant hunters than deer hunters. That amazed me.”

They were lucky in 2006, having applied as a group and getting their tags for the unit they’d listed. Next time around, Roger is going to help by applying for and then transferring resident landowner tags to them.

“There’s a lot of public ground up there,” says Marc, “ranging from little 10-acre sections to 600-acre places. And it’s mostly walk-in.”

That’s true for many counties in Kansas. Jewell, in particular, has more than 40 sections, almost all of it open to deer hunters. The WIHAs are hugely popular. The state pays landowners for the hunting rights on tracts of CRP, field borders and creek bottoms.

No one in Marc’s group had hunted that unit before, which is why they all drove up a couple of days early.

Finding the WIHAs was easy.

Finding the buck of a lifetime, for Marc, was even easier.

BTR Score: 232 7/8

–Mike Handley