Sometimes, the best plan is having no plan at all.
Seth Biehler learned that lesson in October, when he went afield with only his bow and a vague idea of where the property’s biggest whitetail might prefer to rest on folded legs and chew its cud.
The bowhunter from the small town of Herington, Kansas, wasn’t the only person with a hankering for the deer that clearly wore the biggest crown on the property he hunts in east-central Kansas. His wife, dad and uncle also hunt the tract.
The foursome first became acquainted with this deer in early December 2024, when it stepped in front of one of three trail cameras surveilling the property. The animal wasn’t at the top of anyone’s Most Wanted list, but it was definitely a shooter.
Seth’s uncle was the only person to see the buck in person that season. While hunting New Year’s Eve, the then-170-inch whitetail took its sweet time coming into range. By the time it finally strolled into the red zone, there simply wasn’t enough daylight remaining for the hunter to make an ethical shot.
Nobody saw the buck again until late spring, and they weren’t sure it was the same deer, given how much mass the still-growing rack carried. They couldn’t find the sheds from the previous season.
As the summer wore on and the 22 points began developing, however, the similarities became clear. The antlers had gained another 50 inches during that crucial jump from age 4 to age 5 (his taxidermist’s best guess).
All the trail camera images of the deer were nighttime shots until late September, when the unmistakable new bull of the woods began daylighting.
When Seth decided to hunt after work on Oct. 1, he had no real plan. His wife was going to pick up the kids from school, so he reasoned he might as well use the time wisely.
“We hadn’t figured this deer out yet,” said the 31-year-old electrical lineman. “We knew only where it might be bedding.”
That’s another way of saying he hadn’t even erected any stands to that point. So after leaving work, going home to shower and change clothes, he arrived at the property around 4:45, his only game plan to nestle in beside a tree as quietly as possible to watch the bedding area.
“The property has a lot of dips and dives,” he explained. “There are cedars, osage and locust trees, and I just picked a nasty tight spot with limited visibility, a perfect place for a big deer to feel safe to come out and start its night.”
It was more for reconnoitering than an actual hunt. He’d never bowhunted deer from the ground before that day. If a deer showed from almost any direction, it would be in or close to bow range. Only one direction afforded maybe a 250-yard view.
“Too many things can go wrong when you’re on the ground,” he says. “I didn’t even have a stand out because we didn’t really know enough about this deer to make any plans. I just had to at least go out and sit that day, you know?
“As close as I’d planned to get to the buck’s suspected bedding area, I knew carrying in a stand would make too much noise,” he added.
He chose a cedar tree, raked the brush away from the base, and settled in for the evening. It began raining a few minutes later, and he was glad for the shelter.
The rain lasted about an hour.
With less than 15 minutes of shooting light remaining, the deer materialized and eventually wandered within 30 yards of the shocked hunter who never imagined he would actually find himself facing a best-case scenario.
“The deer came out with the wind at its back. It obviously felt safe,” Seth said. “Maybe it was the rain that prompted it to leave its bed earlier than usual, to get a jump on its nightly travels.”
After the thwack, the buck spun hard to the northwest.
After retrieving his bloody arrow, Seth called his wife, father, uncle and a friend before going home. His stomach was so knotted that he couldn’t even eat the supper his wife prepared.
An hour and a half later, all five people convened at the property to begin tracking the deer. A short exercise.
Brad Forbus measured the giant whitetail for Buckmasters, arriving at 219 4/8 inches. The deer falls into the Irregular category, but the rack’s most outstanding feature beyond number of points (its a mainframe 7x7 with eight abnormals) is its nearly 43 inches of mass.