230 Inches: Three-Year Quest for Enormous Kansas Buck Ends

Scott John, a Physical Education teacher and high school basketball coach in Kansas, had spent the last three deer seasons pursuing a giant buck in his home state.

The hunt for the buck started back in 2022, when Scott was actively hunting the big whitetail. The buck was carrying a 160-class rack that fall, Scott says.

"Though I was getting quite a few trail-cam pics of the buck, I never did manage to see him while hunting," he explained. 

The 2023 season began much like the previous year. He was getting trail-cams pictures of the buck again. Studying them, Scott and his friends figured the buck had blossomed into a 180-class buck at that point.

In early November, Scott took two days off from his teaching job to hunt the buck. Sitting all day on one of the hunts, Scott was finally able to lay eyes on the buck for the first time.

"Around 2 p.m. on the all-day sit, I looked up and saw him walking away from me at 100 yards," Scott said. "That’s the only glimpse of the buck I would get for the rest of the year."

With obligations of kids sports, teaching at school, and coaching the high school basketball team, Scott didn’t have much time to pursue the buck the rest of the 2023 season.

But Scott was determined to put more effort into tagging the buck in 2024.

“Again I began getting trail-cam pics of the buck, and he’d blown up into a giant," Scott said.

Putting on approximately 40 inches of antler growth, the buck pushed well over 200 inches.

"This year, however, the buck seemed to be daylighting," Scott explained.

It was 92 degrees on October 22nd. Scott didn’t really feel like going hunting, and was also tasked with taking his son to get a haircut in town. After the haircut, while Scott was driving back home, he happened to glance at a windmill and noticed the wind was blowing straight from the west — an unusual occurance in that part of the state.

With encouragement from his son, as well as Scott's friend Blake who actually called to ask why he wasn’t in a stand, Scott gave in and decided to go hunting that evening.

Settling in his stand situated in a block of timber on the edge of a picked bean field, Scott sat and waited for the evening to unfold.

“I wasn’t in my stand 20 minutes and I heard some rustling," he said. "A big doe had blown and trotted away — I figured she’d smelled me from sweating so much in the sweltering heat."

Figuring the evening hunt would be a bust, Scott's attention was on his cell phone for much of the rest of the evening.

Around 6:10, he noticed a doe milling around in the picked bean field. While watching the lone doe off in the distance, several more does entered the field off to Scott's right and began feeding around 30 yards away. Glassing back down the field with his binoculars, Scott caught movement of a nice 140-class 10-point feeding in the field. It wasn’t 30 seconds later when the giant buck emerged on the scene.

"I began shaking bad," Scott admitted. "But I kept telling myself breathe, breathe, breathe. It happened quick. When the giant buck swung its head up and saw the does that were feeding close to my stand, he was on his way.

With the smaller 10-point already standing at 25 yards facing Scott, the bowhunter had to be careful in his movements when reaching for his bow. With the giant buck now just 23 yards away, Scott began to draw his bow with the smaller buck watching the entire time. Finally getting his bow back, Scott quickly placed his pin on the big buck, releasing an arrow toward its intended mark.

Thinking he’d made a good shot, Scott watched the buck ran off and disappear in the timber. Soon after, he made several phone calls — first to his wife, then friend Blake who could barely understand the shook up bowhunter.

"Blake told me to get off the phone, sit down in my tree stand and just calm down," Scott said.

When the arrow impacted the buck, one of Scott's trail cameras managed to take a picture of it. Studying it himself, and showing friends Blake and Brian, it was decided they’d better let the deer lay overnight.

"I was a nervous wreck that night," Scott said. "I couldn’t sleep and was up the next morning at 2:30 a.m. ready to go look for the deer."

Arriving before light the next day, Scott and Brian began searching for blood at the last spot Scott saw the deer enter the wood lot. Not finding any blood, it wasn’t looking too good at first.  With the two men having to places to be later that morning, they both decided to come back in the afternoon to continue the search.

But while looking around for a stick to mark the last spot they’d tracked the deer, Brian asked Scott, “Hey, is that a white belly over there?”

Sure enough, the three-year quest for the big deer was over, and Scott was overwhelmed.

With mass totaling over 45 inches, and a 191-inch gross typical frame, Scott's Kansas giant grossed an impressive 230 inches.