Rack Magazine

Borrowed stand and grounded son combine to pit Kansas rifleman against the buck of his dreams.

Forty-four-year-old Gene Kimmi of Lancaster, Kansas, and his cousin, Jason, have 400 timbered acres adjacent to a quarter-mile-wide and mile-long strip of CRP. The property also has a small pond, and both corn and soybean fields are nearby.

The whitetails there have everything they need — food, water and ample cover — to thrive. And that’s saying nothing of the fabulous gene pool in northeastern Kansas.

Gene tries to spend every day of the Sunflower State’s short rifle season in a deer stand. He managed only three days in 2011, but those were enough.

When Gene called his cousin to say he was going to hunt Sunday, Dec. 4, Jason said he didn’t think he’d be able to join him. He also invited Gene to try his stand for a change of scenery.

Jason had collected trail camera photographs of a great buck, though all were taken at night.

Gene wound up going alone, and he went to Jason’s elevated box blind.

“My 14-year-old son, Kyle, usually would have been hunting with me,” Gene said. “But he was grounded that day.”

The afternoon temperature was just above freezing, and the northwest wind was a barely noticeable 8 mph.

“I saw an 8-pointer about 4:00 with a huge, high rack,” Gene said. “Jason and I both had passed on that deer previously.”

Gene then spotted several more bucks — two 9-pointers, a 4x4 and two 6-pointers — feeding in a cut cornfield on the north side of the property. If Kyle had been with him, he’d have let the boy shoot the larger 9-pointer, which might’ve scored 140.

“I enjoyed watching the bucks for about 10 minutes,” he said. “They were spread out across the field, the closest about 130 yards away. The buck farthest from me was about 200 yards out, and it kept looking over its shoulder, back into the woods.”

Gene hoped the far buck’s behavior might mean that another, possibly bigger one might be coming to the stubble. His suspicion was confirmed when he eventually saw antlers bobbing through gaps in the trees. When the deer stepped out, Gene was awestruck by the massive rack and the size of the deer’s body.

“I didn’t know if the buck was the one Jason had on a trail camera, but I had no doubt it was a shooter,” he said.

The beefy whitetail was only 125 yards from the blind, an easy job for Gene’s 7mm Remington Magnum. As soon as the scope’s crosshairs settled just behind the massive deer’s shoulder, he squeezed the trigger.

After the boom, Gene was flummoxed to see the buck hadn’t moved. It was just facing the opposite direction.

“The deer gave no indication it had been hit,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it. I knew my gun and scope were zeroed-in.”

When Gene chambered another round and shot again, the deer vanished.

“I was puzzled,” he said. “I could not believe I’d missed the buck of a lifetime twice.”

Unwilling to dismiss the shots as errant, to chalk up two misses as an extreme case of buck fever, Gene got out of the stand and walked to the edge of the field where the buck had been standing. He’d hoped to find blood, but he found much more.

The buck was right there, lying dead in a low spot not visible from even the elevated stand.

When he examined the animal, looking for bullet holes, Gene discovered both had landed in the vitals, within an inch of each other.

“I guess the first bullet went through the deer so quickly that it never felt it,” Gene guessed. “When I shot the second time, it dropped like a rock.”

Unbeknownst to Gene, Jason had arrived to hunt late that afternoon on the other side of the woodlot. As soon as Jason heard the shots, he drove his truck to where Gene was hunting.

Gene greeted him by saying, “You said I could sit in your stand!”

“I was concerned he might be upset that I’d taken the big buck he’d spotted on his trail camera pictures. I’d been hunting the property for 24 years, and Jason had just started hunting it with me,” Gene said. “But he was happy for me and helped me load my deer.

“When I arrived home, Kyle came out to the truck. He was so excited. I told him, ‘I’m sure glad you were grounded. If you’d been with me, you would have shot a 9-pointer that would’ve scored about 140, and then I probably never would have seen this buck.’”

Hunter: Gene Kimmi
BTR Score: 185 6/8
View BTR Scoresheet

This article was published in the June 2016 edition of Rack Magazine. Subscribe today to have Rack Magazine delivered to your home.

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