Well, things have settled down a lot of late. Despite some unhelpful meddling by the legislature, the state game department has pretty much stayed the course on their trophy deer management plans: very limited nonresident permits; only one buck annually for residents; and firearms hunting after the rut so the best bucks get to breed. Also, a lot of the early guiding failures are gone, with lessons learned on what it takes to consistently put clients on mature deer. Many successful outfitters have now instituted solid, long-range management plans.
The upshot is, there are now a number of deer operators in Kansas who are consistently producing whitetails grossing 160 to 190 inches of antler. Some are even cracking the magical 200-inch mark about every season. Keep in mind these are gross figures. Kansas bucks are known to be long on mass and tine length, but they have a habit of growing a lot of extra "treasure" points that are great for gross, but hard on B & C net scores.
As for where to hunt, all parts of Kansas produce at least some great bucks, as witness the fact that in 2005 a 240-plus buck was killed a few miles from the Kansas/Missouri border in the east, and a 220-class mule deer was shot near Colorado in western Kansas. Overall, however, the southern part of the state continues to be tops for mega-whitetails, especially from Wichita westward, where ranches are large enough to........(continued)
