September 2026
A Veterans Day Buck: A Kansas Archery Mule Deer Hunt
Hunter: Cody Barnett
Species: Mule Deer
Location: Kansas, near Hays
Method: Archery, spot and stalk with Dan Cross of JD Outfitting
My dad and I arrived in Hays, Kansas, on November 9, 2026, to hunt mule deer and whitetail with Dan Cross at JD Outfitting. We did not know what to expect considering it was our first time in Kansas. The weather was all over the place, with drastic temperature changes daily; the first morning was fifteen degrees with a high of forty, and the next day had a low of forty and a high of seventy-five. This made hunting very difficult at the start.
A Miss on a 200-Inch Giant
I was spot-and-stalk hunting for mule deer while my dad was sitting in blinds for whitetail. The first morning, my guide Dan Cross and I saw a 180-class buck on a neighboring ranch. Later that evening, we spotted a 200-plus running along a fence line 600 yards away. We hiked in around some large hay bales to the corner of the field, thinking he’d run on by along the fence line. Sure enough, I had an opportunity: eighty yards in a crosswind. I went to full draw on my knees and had to stand up to shoot due to the fence. My string barely hit my puffer jacket, and I ended up missing.
We got a video of him after the shot. If we’d had a decoy, we’d probably have been able to get him to come back in. He was an absolute giant: a five-by-six with a ton of stickers on his antlers and bases the size of beer cans. Well over a 200-inch deer. Oh well. On to the next… Ten minutes later, right before dark, we saw a large 180-class buck with a hot doe close by. It almost seemed like the big buck was running towards the doe from 1000 yards away based on the wind direction. I did not have a shot since I couldn’t see my pins. Day one complete.
Cutting Off a Buck in the Draws
The next morning, we didn’t see anything as it went from forty degrees to seventy-five. That evening, we drove up the backside of a 3,000-acre ranch to a canyon that had a bunch of deep draws and rocky scab terrain. It was still very hot out, but a few does—seven in total—busted out of the large canyon. We noticed a completely different 200-inch buck standing in the hole. The buck and the does were 550 yards away, and he took off when the does did.
We were driving out on the ridgeline, and the neighboring property to our left had cut hay fields for miles with some deep draws. Sure enough, we turned our heads, and there was a 180-to-190-inch-class buck standing broadside at fifty or sixty yards. The buck began to walk down into a shallow draw, where we watched him slowly disappear. From that point, Dan’s game plan was to go back down into the lowlands in order to potentially cut him off back on our property where the draw ended. The assumption was that he needed water and was heading to the stock tanks in the lowlands. We hiked in about a quarter mile to the first small draw, and he wasn’t there. We checked two more small draws, making sure he wasn’t in either. The next draw over was the larger one where we had last seen him.
Head On at Fifteen Yards
We wanted to get in there and set up to see if he’d walk the draw out. Before we even went down on our knees, I saw him running full speed over the ridge and down into the draw, where we lost sight of him. We went forward a bit on an old cattle trail and set up just past the fence post of another pasture for a clear shot. We ranged the bottom of the draw, thinking he’d walk out there, and it was all fifty-to-eighty-yard shots. We thought wrong—I saw some random movement, then I saw antler tips slowly coming over the hill we were on. We sucked into the small hillside to avoid being seen. I went full draw when his face went behind some yucca plants, believing he would walk out broadside at around thirty yards. Wrong again…
As soon as his nose came out past the yucca, he took a hard right turn onto the old cattle trail and came right at me. I let him continue to walk in since he didn’t know we were there yet. He noticed us eventually and slowed down the walk since something was in his way. He came head on all the way in to about fifteen or twenty yards. As soon as he lifted up his head, I arrowed him in front of his right shoulder, angling into his chest cavity. He ran seventy yards to my right and dumped over on the hillside. Talk about some serious close-range shooting compared to the day before. He was the same buck we’d seen the evening prior right at dark. We believe the other larger buck with the does pushed him out.
A Veterans Day Buck
The broadhead hit his heart and lungs and lodged into a rib farther back. There was no damage to the arrow—it was completely intact. The luck of this hunt was unreal, to say the least, and I was blessed to take a beautiful Kansas buck on Veterans Day.
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