Kansas just quietly got a new whitetail record—and the story behind it is almost as big as the buck itself. According to an article a year ago via Kansas.com, back in 1995, bowhunter Albert Daniels shot a 200-inch typical buck in Franklin County. At the time, he wasn’t chasing trophies, didn’t enter the deer in any record books, and didn’t even take a photo with it. He was hunting for meat, plain and simple, and the giant rack could have faded into obscurity… if life hadn’t intervened.
Fast forward two decades. Daniels had sold the mount during hard times, and it bounced from collector to collector. All that remained was a Polaroid of the buck hanging on his wall. Enter his son, Matthew. Spotting the photo and realizing its potential, he launched a full-on online scavenger hunt, tracking the buck through Facebook groups and collectors across the country.
The result is that the 200-inch rack is now officially recognized as the largest typical whitetail ever taken in Kansas—decades after it was shot. Daniels himself could not care less about the record. For him, the real trophy has been getting back in the woods with his son, harvesting deer together, and making memories that no record book could ever capture.
Read the full story here.
Feature photo: The Albert Daniels buck’s antlers net 200 inches of typical whiletail antlers, which are judged on symmetry and size rather than raw inches, as is the case with nontypical scoring. Courtesy Matthew Daniels
