By: Blake Storts
In October 1995, in Franklin County, Kansas, Albert J. Daniels set out for a typical fall hunt of whitetail. The area he was set up in wasn’t for producing big bucks but in a county near Franklin County was where the old state record was harvested. In an interview about the hunt, Daniels had said he didn’t even plan on scoring the buck after he had shot and killed it and didn’t even take a photo of it when walking up to it. Daniels had been hunting on a property that had been repossessed by the bank, He had gotten permission from the banker to hunt the land. He set up a treestand in an oak tree with about a 10-yard gap in front of him to see the deer. After he had shot the deer and waited for about an hour he began to track the deer and couldn’t find it so he set out the next day to do so and ended up finding it a couple hundred yards from his treestand. After harvesting it and taking it back to his house it sat there for 6 years until Albert had to sell it during times of trouble then over 20 years later Albert’s son Matthew found a picture of the buck in a stack of others and asked his dad where the deer was because Matthew being a fellow hunter recognized the deer’s immense size and scoring potential. Matthew eventually tracked down the buck and offered to buy it back but the owner was asking for nearly $40,000 for the prized possession. After doing further research, it was found out that in 2019 the deer was entered into the Boone and Crockett record books by its new owner Bass Pro Shops. It measured exactly 200 inches on the dot making it one of only 20 other known bucks to have surpassed this legendary mark.
