30 Years Later, Kansas Officially Certifies 200-Inch Archery Buck as the New State Record
On Friday the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks officially recognized this 200-inch buck as the largest typical archery whitetail ever taken in the state.
Bowhunter Albert Daniels tagged the 12-pointer in Franklin County in 1995, and it only resurfaced after the hunter’s son, Matthew Daniels, spent seven years trying to track down the shoulder mount and then submitted it to the record books.
Although the agency indicated at the time that it would update the record books to certify Albert Daniel’s buck, KDWP finally updated the state records on its website last week, as reported by the Wichita Eagle and confirmed by the younger Daniels Tuesday. It’s the conclusion Daniels has been waiting for, though he still says the certificate itself is in the mail.
“I knew it was going in the right direction,” Daniels says of the process. “I just finally got all the paperwork and the official score sheets that I needed.”
Daniels started the Kansas record-certification process as the final chapter in his search to recover the long-lost buck, which scores exactly 200 0/8 inches. His dad had sold the shoulder mount to a collector for a couple thousand dollars in the early 2000s, and Daniels only discovered the deer’s existence when he came across a polaroid of the buck hanging on a wall. Eventually, he discovered Bass Pro Shops had bought the buck and entered it into the Boone & Crockett records in 2019.
“I’m really happy that my dad gets the recognition that he deserves and the deer does, as well,” says Daniels. “You know, the deer — there’s only like 20 of them that big in the world, so to have the deer get the recognition that it deserves makes me happy as well.”
The Boone & Crockett Club lists the Daniels buck as the No. 1 Typical whitetail ever taken in Kansas by any method. The Daniels buck is also the 23rd largest typical whitetail of all-time, according to B&C. Just two typical whitetails in the Pope & Young records are bigger, and only by a few inches. M.J. Johnson currently holds the world-record typical archery buck, which he killed in Peoria County, Illinois, in 1965 with a trad bow.
While Daniels says his dad is happy about the official status change, Albert Daniels also hasn’t been too fussed about the outcome.
“He’s never been a guy that goes out and brags about stuff, or doesn’t really care about being recognized for anything. He shot the deer to feed his family. He didn’t shoot it ’cause it had a giant rack,” Daniels says of his dad. “He hasn’t really cared if [his buck] gets recognized or not … but he’s proud that it’s in there, that’s for sure.”
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Source: https://www.outdoorlife.com/hunting/kansas-state-record-daniels-buck/
