Big Deer blogger Dean Weimer reports on this Kansas giant shot last month:

High school teacher and multi-sport coach Scott John is a dedicated family man and avid outdoorsman. He is a consummate hunter who absolutely loves bowhunting whitetails in his home area of eastern Kansas.

Scott had been after a dandy non-typical buck for the last two seasons. But as they so often do, the giant had eluded Scott’s best efforts. In fact, he’d only ever laid eyes on the buck once while in a stand. That was in early November 2023.

On Tuesday October 22, 2024, the temperature was a balmy 92 degrees–less than ideal hunting conditions to say the least. Scott, like practically every other sane bowhunter out there, opted to stay at home. “I had pretty much ruled out going mainly because I didn’t want to sweat in my stand and get eaten by mosquitoes,” he says.

That afternoon, after taking his son, Remington, to get a haircut, Scott realized that the wind was out of the west. “Remington told me to go hunt, that if I didn’t the big non-typical would probably show up,” he says. “I decided he was right. The wind was in my favor and we had nothing else going on.”

Scott’s bowhunting time is precious. His job as varsity boy’s basketball coach would start on November 18. From then until the end of the season, his hunting time gets pretty limited. This helped Scott make the decision to go hunt a bit easier that October afternoon, regardless of the seemingly counterproductive hot conditions.

As Scott was readying his gear, his phone rang. It was his buddy, Blake, who has helped John hang many stands and has been a great source for good advice on how to hunt certain spots. Blake, realizing that west was one of the best possible winds for John’s primary stand, wondered why Scott wasn’t hunting. “Getting ready to head out,” John said.

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“As I got to my hunting spot, I noticed that the turkey farm had delivered some turkey manure to fertilize the ground,” Scott said. “I had to walk past the pile to get to my stand, so I decided to use it as a little bit of cover scent. I made sure to rub my boots in it. Anyone who has ever been around (turkey manure) knows it has a very strong odor. I thought I had nothing to lose.”

Scott had been in the tree for roughly 25 minutes when he heard something moving in the brush just northwest of his position. Although he couldn’t see anything through the thick brush, he figured it was a squirrel, or a bird rustling in the leaves.

Then he heard a loud snort from that spot! Scott was puzzled, as the deer was upwind of him and he was hidden well. “I was pretty discouraged and was thinking, “it’s hot, I’m sweating’ and a deer must’ve  caught my scent upwind somehow’. I texted Remington and told him that it was probably a waste of time to hunt with such warm temps,” he said dejectedly.

Boy was he wrong!

“I sat in my stand for another 30 to 35 minutes, really just on my phone and glancing up to scan the field occasionally. I was thinking about all the stuff I could have been getting done instead of sweating in my tree stand. Around 6:15, I put my phone away. I grabbed my binoculars and scanned the tree line where I knew deer frequently came out into the field. I noticed a doe just inside the tree line, about to come out.”

Scott glassed the doe and noticed another deer, a yearling buck, moving behind her. He continued to watch them for about 10 minutes, and then 2 more does and a fawn walked out about 30 yards from his stand.

As the deer picked in the field south of his position, Scott noticed a big-bodied deer step out into the field. A 140-class 10-pointer. Ten seconds after that here came THE ONE!

“Everyone says it happens fast, and boy they aren’t lying,” says Scott. “I called that buck The One because for the last 2 years I had only wanted to go after this one buck. There was no need to get the binocs up to take a glance. I knew immediately it was him!

“When I tell you I was shaking, I mean I don’t ever remember a time in my life where my heart was beating faster and my hands were tingling while shaking. I began to tell myself to breathe and don’t look at anything except his body. I had one dilemma. My binocs were in my hand, not my bow. I began to reach very slowly with my left hand for my bow, trying not to be spotted by the does that had walked up close to the stand.”

Suddenly the big buck saw the does and made a beeline for them! The does had worked their way close to Scott’s position, which made him nervous about trying to draw. “I began to pull my bow back when the small buck threw up his head and looked at me, but just for a second,” Scott recalls. “When he turned his head, I came to full draw. I remember telling myself to slow the shot down and take my time. I had previously found my yardage by ranging the deer and making mental marks in my head. He was at 23 yards. I put my top pin on him and lined everything up. It all happened so fast I pulled the trigger on my release and heard that sound we all want to hear.”

Then panic set in when Scott realized he had hit the buck a bit high and back. His trail camera took a picture of the buck immediately after the hit. Scott used that image in making the decision of whether to go after the buck right away or wait.

After conferring with Blake and another friend, Brian Helman, Scott decided to wait until the next morning to go search for the buck. As is the case every time a bowhunter has to wait, there was not much sleep to come for John that night.

Next morning Scott and Brian headed out. “Brian is very good at tracking. He looked at the ground and said he went here, then this way, and so on. We stood there and I told Brian that I hadn’t called my principal and told him I would be late, so I was going to have to get to school. Brian had business too and was short on time.

“We were standing there talking about what we would do, when Brian took one last look out through the woods and pointed to a white belly. I can’t describe the emotions we had. Walking up on a deer like this was something out of a fairy tale. We dragged him 75 yards out of the timber to take pictures. What an end to the 3-year quest.”

At the time of this writing Scott’s giant has been unofficially green-scored, but what a big deer! The Scott John Buck is a narrow but extremely tall and massive monster. At just 16 0/8” inside spread, the buck really produces in mass and tine length. The G2s and G3s range from 10 6/8” to 13 2/8”; mass measurements vary from 5 0/8” to 6 4/8” for a gross mass total of 44 2/8”. The buck sports 23 total points and after deductions will net very easily into the 220s non-typical.

While Kansas is known for producing its share of giant archery non-typicals, the Scott John Buck will rank right up there with the best of them after the 60-day drying period.