We had spoke briefly the night of the UBNJ game dinner, just barely long enough to exchange contact information, then over the next few months we chatted a few times to coordinate the details for his turkey hunt. When the second week of spring turkey season rolled around Rich and I finally got together face to face again, I could see the anticipation and excitement in his face as we headed out from the Wawa for our first morning set up. Over the next couple days Rich and I had some serious spring gobbler activity and I am sure that Rich had the time of his life. That, however, is a story for another time, maybe a little closer to this years' spring turkey season and in Rich's own words. Suffice it to say Rich had such a good time that he decided to join me as a cameraman during some of my additional hunts during the latter weeks of the season. During the time we spent hunkered down in the turkey blind we got to know each other a little, and just like with any new friendship there's the opportunity to share about your family, reflect on previous hunting experiences, glean a little new insight for future hunting adventures and sometimes the opportunity arises to share such an adventure together. 

As fate would have this was one of those occasions, Rich had mentioned an outfitter he was working with in Kansas and invited me to join him for a fall archery hunt. After checking out the finer aspects of the logistics and coordinating with my social director (my wife) I told Rich that it would be possible to make the trip and suggested we try to time it to hit the new moon that was scheduled for the end of October. The months had passed quickly, Rich had coordinated everything with our outfitter Bob Chris, we'd had a safe, uneventful flight, our luggage had arrived unscathed and at the same time we did, we'd gotten in late Thursday night and settled into our room, we'd taken our time Friday choosing to sleep in and then set our stands just after lunchtime.

It was now early afternoon and the sun had taken the morning chill from the air, the landscape was a pleasant change from the over crowded deer woods of New Jersey. Rich had insisted on taking the first sit as cameraman, he and Bob wanted to take me to one of the spots they considered to be absolutely top notch. We were on the same little flat where Rich had almost connected on a massive buck the year before, a buck that was harvested the week after Rich had left, a buck that had scored 196. Personally I did not need a buck that huge to be satisfied I am still working my way up to that point. I told Rich I would be fine with something in the 130 to 140 range and since I am not the best judge of that from a tree I was happy to have Rich there in the tree with me to give me a rough estimate if we did see something.

We did not have to wait long to start seeing GAME; we were in the stand less than an hour when Rich spotted some turkeys coming in from his side. The birds moved in and fed through one of my shooting lanes. There were some real nice longbeards in the group and we tucked that information away for later in the hunt, fall turkey season was in and if we were lucky and scored early there might be an opportunity for some turkey hunting. It was roughly around 3:00pm when we saw the first DEER; a big doe was feeding down the ridge top in our direction. She slowly moved closer, stopping every few steps to feed on the acorns that littered the forest floor. It wasn't long before more deer came into view and joined her, they moved into a small grassy area on the flat roughly forty-five yards away and seemed content to stay put and feed.

The small herd of 5 does continued to casually feed for about a half hour, because of the way we had the stands set up I was not able to see them very well. Rich had a good view and I relied on his discrete hand signals to let me know what the deer were doing. A sudden change in his body language indicated to me that there was a buck coming in, I couldn't see it but knew from the signals I was getting from Rich that it was a nice one. I waited until he gave me the Ok to stand and then turned and strained to see the incoming buck. It wasn't hard to pick him out, body wise he was huge and his rack was certainly not hard to spot. I think I muttered "Holy $#!+" to Rich when I got a good look at him. Rich was already filming him and had already gotten a really good view of him, he told me he was a ten pointer and would probably go between 130 and 140.

A lot was running through my mind as this big boy moved steadily toward the does, this was the first afternoon, should I shoot him? What if I let him go and he turns out to be the one I should have taken? Fortunately we had discussed what we would do if I really nice buck came in. Both Rich and Bob had shared their thoughts on the topic, Bob was of the opinion that if it was a buck you would be happy with and one that you would shoot the last day of the hunt then don't hesitate just because it is the first day of the hunt, Rich's opinion was similar in that if it was a trophy to "you" and a deer "you" wanted to shoot then go ahead and fill your tag. Just because a deer might not measure up in someone else’s book doesn't mean it not the deer for you.

I was carefully weighing the options in my head while I watched the big buck continue to move in on the does and I was fairly certain I would take the deer if the opportunity presented itself. I wouldn't have long to decide or second guess myself, when the buck was about fifteen yards from the does he stretched his neck forward and let out grunt. You could see his entire body stiffen, his lip curled back and you could see the shiver pass down his flanks. The biggest does immediately broke away, made a semi-circle, and ran right under our stand set up on Rich's side. The big buck followed at a quick pace, as he rounded the large oak tree and headed in toward us I went to full draw. I knew If he followed the doe I would have a very small shot opportunity. On his current course my best shot would be about ten yards out just before he started to pass beneath us, but it would not be ideal the buck would be quartering hard to me, however he would be close enough to go over the shoulder and down in behind it.

Rich had continued to film and as the buck stopped ten yards away he glanced in my direction. I was already at full draw settling my pin behind the buck's shoulder. Rich had just looked back through the viewfinder when I released my arrow, the buck kicked hard at the impact and bolted off about fifty yards. I was concerned because I felt the shot had been a little far back and I did not get full penetration. We could see the buck as he stood, and for a brief moment he wobbled and I thought he was going down, but then he seemed to regain his composure and then he very slowly moved to the edge of the ridge and dropped out of sight. From the treestand we identified a small cedar tree as a place to start looking for sign in the morning, we felt given the uncertain nature of the hit it would be best to pull out and look in the morning.

Friday evening was very long, we reviewed the footage back at the Bob's farm house and tried to determine how good or bad the hit was. There was a lot of years of hunting experience in the room that night and it was hard for anyone to come to a conclusion one way or the other. My personal feeling was that there was a good chance I had managed to hit the liver and if so we would find the deer. I also knew it would be a tough track since the arrow had not passed through the deer and there would probably be little to no blood to follow. I did come up with an idea right before we went to bed as to how I could figure out just how much of my arrow was actually inside the deer. I got out the video camera and played the footage again, I stopped it when I had a good view of the deer standing still with the arrow sticking out of his back. I took a small ruler and measured the length of the fletching and the part of the arrow sticking out of the deer. Then I measured the actual length of the fletching and the overall length of one of my other arrows. I made a simple ration based on the actual fletching length and that of the fletching on the camera LCD screen. From that I was able to determine the length of the arrow sticking out of the deer. Lastly I subtracted that length of arrow that I had calculated sticking out of the deer from my overall arrow length, this indicated that somewhere between 10 and 12 inches of my arrow had penetrated the deer's body. This little bit of information bolstered my hopes, if I had not hit too far back then the arrow was definitely in the liver and the deer was already down.

Rich and I sat the same stand early the next morning with me holding the camera just in case another big buck happened to running the same ridge top. We saw a few does and a spike during those first few hours after sunrise. We got down and began the task of looking for the big buck I had hit the night before, we started where the buck was standing when I shot it and then slowly covered the area we had seen it cover when it ran off all the way over to the little cedar tree on the edge of the ridge. We did not discover a single drop of blood and it was very hard to be optimistic, but it was our duty to do everything possible to locate this deer. We began making sweeps of the ridge, first one way then back the OTHER; we covered the entire side of the ridge from top to bottom, all the way down to the stream. We then crossed the stream and spilt up. I went one way and Rich the other. After two hours of hard searching we had still not seen any sign of the wounded deer. I was recrossing the stream for the third or forth time when I spotted a deer abbout a hundred yards away standing in some timber just watching me. I put my binoculars on it and discovered it was a doe, not the big buck I was looking for. I crossed onto a little rise and headed back towards Rich.

We met up near the edge of the creek on this little flat that was covered with a lush green grass, deciding to take one last look before calling in Bob and some more troops to cover the ground we moved across the flat toward the base of the next ridge. Suddenly Rich signals for me to get down, I see him looking hard in front of us. After a few tense moments Rich stands up and says there's your deer. Lying on its' side next to a log was this beautiful 11 pointer. The big buck had blended in so perfectly with fallen log that I had walked right by it at forty yards and never noticed it. Unbelievable!! 

Now it was time to call Bob and the rest of his troops to help get this heavy weight back up the ridge. Even dressed out it took four and sometimes five of us to haul my trophy up the ridge and back out to the waiting pick-up. When we got this deer to a scale I was shocked to see the needle pointing to the 210Lb. mark. What a great deer!!

With almost two full weeks left Rich and I thought for sure we would have his tag filled in a few short days. We did see some more good bucks over the next few days, but Rich was holding out for something a bit bigger. The film footage we got though was awesome, we captured several buck fights, plenty of turkey action, and a coyote that Rich mouth called to the base of the tree on one of our sets. Unfortunately for us the weather warmed up and the buck activity went down to zip.

We were able to score on some nice coyotes as a side perk to the hunt. You can check us out with some of the dogs we popped on Bob's farm. I'm looking forward to more Kansas adventures in the future. I'd like to again thank Rich Novotny and Bob Chris for the excellent experience I had out there with them in Kansas.

If you're interested in hunting Kansas with Bob Chris contact Rich Novotny at 732-556-7849 or email him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it