Coffey County Buck Reshuffles Kansas Records
By Mike Handley
Had Dallas Birk kept walking instead of responding to a friend’s cry about finding blood on Oct. 18, the coyotes in his corner of Coffey County might have gone hungry that night.
The 32-year-old trackhoe operator from Burlington, Kansas, was walking along a pond dam, scouring the earth for any sign of the buck he’d arrowed a few hours earlier, when his buddy found blood. Of course Dallas joined him.
The pond was the second area they’d searched, figuring if the deer had not sought refuge in the nearby CRP, it might have gone toward water. While Dallas walked the dam, his friend headed into the brush below it.
They’d already given the world-class whitetail four hours to expire before undertaking the search in the CRP.
Dallas would still be searching today if they hadn’t eventually found the animal. He’d amassed three years of trail camera photographs of it, and he knew the rack would top 230 inches. Based on shed antler measurements, it had been at 209 the previous year.
After seeing the animal twice during the summer of 2024, he set up a trail camera over mineral-laced corn. Three times between Oct. 2 and 7, the buck visited the manmade buffet right at daylight. At noon on the third day, Dallas spent four hours erecting a ground blind, brushing it in with a couple of wooden pallets and cedar branches, and setting up more cameras.
“I had to do a little out-of-the-box thinking,” he explained. “I’m not even a fan of ground blinds, but that was my only choice because there were no big trees there. I used a phone app to determine where the sun would be, to figure out how best to position the blind for morning light.
“One window faced the soybean field; one faced the bait site,” he continued.
He finished the day hunting out of the new setup, but then he didn’t return for more than a week.
Hoping the buck would come through on Oct. 17, as it had the two previous years, Dallas went to the blind with a spring in his step.
“I saw nothing that day, not even does, which seemed very strange,” he said. “I couldn’t figure out why.”
Nevertheless, he was back in the blind before sunrise on Friday the 18th. Some does arrived soon afterward, but they stayed around for no more than 10 minutes.
“That was odd. According to the photos, they usually hung around for at least 45 minutes,” Dallas said. “I knew something was up.”
The long-legged bull of the woods, unusually tall for a whitetail, wafted out of the nearby bean field just after legal shooting light and stopped to rub a small tree.
“I was shocked. I remember telling myself, This is happening. He’s coming in!” Dallas said.
When the buck was at 20 yards, it stopped and stared at the blind. It was approaching from downwind, and the window on that side was closed.
Dallas couldn’t open the window, and he didn’t dare move. After awhile, the deer lost interest and veered toward some CRP, its favorite bedding area. The turn brought it 5 yards closer for a couple of minutes. As it paused behind a lone cedar, Dallas drew his bow. All the animal had to do was resume walking, and — hit or miss — the man’s three-year quest would probably end.
Rather than continuing to its bed, however, the buck turned back toward its favorite breakfast and walked straight toward the surprised hunter. Unwilling to take a head-on shot, Dallas fought the burn in his shoulder until the 30-pointer passed behind the cedar again and he could let down his bow.
The whitetail ate for five minutes, and then wandered over to a nearby mock scrape. When it finally turned broadside and extended its leg, Dallas drew a second time and released the arrow.
During the moment of truth, Dallas realized he’d shut his eyes, only to jerk them open just in time to see the arrow pass through the deer.
“I guess it was buck fever,” he said. “Still, I knew I’d hit the deer, and the arrow went through it. I watched it run for 100 yards before it slowed and disappeared. I probably should’ve waited, but I retrieved the arrow only a few minutes later.
“The shaft was clean, but the fletching was covered in what looked like lung blood. I felt good about the shot until I found a little piece of liver and realized I’d hit farther back than I’d aimed,” he continued. “I went home after that, waited four hours, and returned with a buddy.”
When the guys finally found blood below the dam, they followed it for 150 yards to a grisly tableau.
“There was blood, lots of it, spread out over a 15-yard radius,” Dallas said.
Rather than risk jumping the wounded, by-then-anemic animal, the duo stopped and called for help. A pair of tracking dogs were unleashed at the blood four hours later, but they kept going to the dam.
“We didn’t believe them, so we kept taking them back to the blood,” Dallas confessed. “Turns out, the deer was lying only 30 yards from where we’d found the first blood. It had doubled back.”
He might have even spotted the deer if he’d finished walking the dam that morning.
The search party quickly deduced the deer had run into a pack of coyotes almost immediately. During the battle, the animal had gored one or more of them. A piece of fur was still on one of the antler points.
The pack won the battle, however. The back half of the deer had been stripped, probably during the four-hour wait for the two handlers and their dogs to arrive.
Brad Forbus scored the 30-pointer for Buckmasters. At 255 inches, it ranks fifth among the Sunflower State’s bow-felled Irregulars.
Photos courtesy Dallas Birk