A 23-year-old Kansas man’s roughly eight-year effort isn’t over but just hit another milestone — getting his father’s 1995 buck recognized as the largest typical shot in the state.
Matthew Daniels said the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks updated its website Friday, showing his father, 67-year-old Albert Daniels, now with the top spot . He shot his deer with a compound bow while sitting on a limb of a cedar tree in Franklin County.
The rack measured at 200 inches.
The Eagle wrote in December about the years of effort Matthew Daniels put in to find and try to buy the rack or a replica . Daniels wrote and made several dozen emails, letters, messages and phone calls over the years to the owners of the rack as it went from the owner he tracked down at the time, a Maine collector, to an Ohio collector and then to Bass Pro Shops, which now owns it.
Daniels, an avid bowhunter himself, was eventually able to get a replica and surprised his father with it on Christmas Eve.
In the article, The Eagle also talked with the previous record holder, Denny Finger, who shot a 198 2/8-inch buck in Nemaha County in 1974.
Finger still holds the record for largest Kansas deer shot with a rifle.
Kansas is known for its trophy deer, but a 200 inch typical is more rare than Wi-Fi on a mountain peak.
The Daniels buck is one of 20 known typical racks to reach 200 inches, according to the Boone and Crockett Club, which keeps track of records . Typical antlers follow a standard pattern for the species and are scored on size and symmetry, while non-typical racks are scored on sheer size.
Matthew Daniels said he’s now trying to get a replica of the buck on display at hunting stores in Kansas for hunters in the state to appreciate.
Daniels learned in 2019 that his father’s buck had been on Boone and Crockett Club’s list of record whitetails, showing it as the largest known typical in Kansas history.
Now it is recognized by Kansas too.
“I feel proud, happy, and successful,” he said in a message. “A lot of work has went into this process and journey and to have things ending the way I had hoped for feels great.”
Daniels, in the WHTL podcast that aired Thursday , talked about the effort and his father’s reaction to all his son has done. Daniels said the podcast airing the day before the record was updated was coincidence and that he had been working with the state for months.
“I think he’s more proud of the journey of me,” Daniels said on the podcast. “The journey I went through, then he is of getting recognition for the deer. He doesn’t care (about) the record … that was on me to kind of, ‘You deserve it, dad.’”
