Vern Evans
Like many distinctive bucks that wander across property lines, several hunters have targeted a legendary whitetail in Southeast Kansas over the years. Local bowhunter Dallas Birk, who lives in Burlington, is one of them. He’s been after the giant buck for three seasons in a row.
“I nicknamed him ‘Linebacker’ because he was so big and his rack was so large that [I think] no other buck would fight him,” Birk tells Outdoor Life. “That’s why he never had any broken tines from fighting.”
Birk says he’s been able to get trail cam photos of the deer over the years. Most, but not all, of those were taken at night.
“Last year he showed on camera in the day on Oct. 17, and I planned to hunt him at that same spot and time this year.”
So, during the early morning hours of Oct. 18, Birk set up in a ground blind, since trees were scarce on the 240-acre private parcel. He looked out over a soybean field with CRP nearby, where he thought the buck was bedding.
“Just before dawn a few does came by my blind, and went to a feed pile I had of corn and some mineral additive I make,” says the 32-year-old construction worker. (Baiting deer is legal on private land in Kansas but prohibited on public land throughout the state. These regulations could change, however.) “But they didn’t stay long. I thought that was odd because deer love that mix of corn and Koated [mineral].”
About five minutes after the does departed and just before shooting light, Birk spotted Linebacker’s unmistakable rack at 25 yards. The buck turned and looked at Birk, and for a moment he thought Linebacker would move downwind and spook. When the buck turned again, Birk drew.
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“But instead, he turned and came straight toward me. I couldn’t shoot,” Birk says. “I’m holding my bow at full draw for a minute and my shoulders are burning. I finally had to let off on my bow.”
This was the biggest buck he’d ever seen, and Birk had to calm himself down. He finally got his opportunity when Linebacker headed to a mock scrape Birk had made nearby.
“He turned broadside, took a step forward. I aimed and let my arrow fly.”
Birk never saw the arrow in flight, but he heard it hit the deer and he watched the buck run about 100 yards after the shot. Then Linebacker slowed his pace and disappeared over a hill.
Birk found and inspected his arrow, which had passed all the way through. There was evidence of a liver hit with some intestines on it. He decided to leave the area to give the deer some time, and he went home and called a friend, Dylan Lamon.
About noon they returned to look for Linebacker and followed his blood trail about 150 yards to a place where they believed the buck had bedded down.
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“There was a lot of blood on the ground, and it looked like coyotes had got to him and he was fighting them,” Birk says. “We tried tracking him from that spot but there was no blood trail to follow.”
They decided to call a tracking dog handler, and they took up Linebacker’s trail about 5 p.m. The hardworking dogs discovered the dead buck by 6:30 p.m.
“The dogs did a great job, and they found Linebacker only 200 yards from my ground blind,” Birk says. “The buck had backtracked, making it difficult to find him … he’d also been harassed by coyotes.”
Birk says it was disheartening at first to see the torn-up buck, which had bite marks along its flanks. There was also coyote fur stuck to its antlers, a sign that the deer went down fighting.
“It must have been a real battle between the coyotes and Linebacker,” Birk says. “This part of Kansas is loaded with coyotes, and they are a real problem.”
Birk recently took the rack to Brad Forbus, an official Buckmasters scorer in Lincoln City. Forbus counted 30 points in total and a final Buckmasters score of 255 inches. It’s a giant of a whitetail for any state, but Birk thinks the 5- to 6-year-old deer could rank among the top 10 bucks ever taken in Kansas.
“I’ve met with Kansas game department folks and they were congratulatory about another 200-plus-inch buck taken from the state,” Birk says. “I’ll have Linebacker mounted by a taxidermist and will either display him in my workshop or my home.”
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