Son Finally Tracks Down His Dad’s Long-Lost Buck. It’s the Biggest Typical Whitetail Ever Killed in Kansas
In October 1995, bowhunter Albert J. Daniels shot a massive 200-inch Kansas buck in Franklin County. But there’s a very nontypical story behind this typical 12-point. Daniels’ buck wouldn’t make it into the record books for almost 25 years, and it was only just rediscovered with the help of his son.
Daniels, who was far more excited about the meat than the antlers, didn’t even snap a photo with the buck after he shot it. Although he did have the deer mounted, he never considered having it scored. The mount hung on his wall until Daniels hit a financial rough patch in the early 2000s.
“He sold it to a collector for a couple of thousand dollars,” Daniels’ son Matthew tells Outdoor Life.
The sale happened before Matthew was born. All that was left of the buck was a Polaroid of the mount hanging on a living room wall. The bucks’ tines are so tall they almost brush the ceiling.
“Back when I first got into bowhunting, my dad pulled that Polaroid picture out of his dresser and was showing it to me. It was huge. I asked him about the score,” says Matthew, who is now 23. “He’s never had any of his deer scored. He doesn’t give a crap about any of that.”
However, the elder Daniels had a faint memory of the guy scoring the rack when he bought it.
“My dad remembered like 200,” Matthew says. “I was like, ‘There’s no way, because that would be a Kansas state record.’”
At the time, the typical Kansas record was a 198 2/8-inch buck Dennis Finger took with a rifle in Nemaha County in 1974. If his dad’s buck really had been 200 inches, it could easily replace that deer. Matthew couldn’t let the potential record go, even if his dad didn’t own the deer anymore. So he decided to track down the long-lost deer. He started his search by posting a picture of the Polaroid in the Kansas Hunting and Fishing Facebook group in October 2017. He hoped someone there might recognize the deer and help him locate it.
“I knew it was a long shot,” Matthew says. “But within 24 hours, I [had the contact for] the guy who had it. That was pretty crazy.”
Albert’s buck had changed hands several times, eventually landing with Maine-based collector Harvey Libby. When Matthew received a tip that Libby had the mount, he immediately wrote a letter and sent him the Polaroid.
In Nov. 2017, Libby wrote back, confirming that he had Daniels’ buck. He had purchased the mount from Pennsylvania-based collector Brad Gsell.
“Any rack that qualifies as 200 inches typical is a tremendous rack from any state, any province,” Libby said in an interview with The Wichita Eagle, which broke the story. “I think it was a tremendous rack. It wasn’t overly wide but had long tines … kind of a handsome rack.”
In his letter, Libby wrote that he believed the buck’s “rightful place/home is with the hunter who harvested it,” so he offered to sell it back to them for $39,500.
The price tag was staggering, but Mathews decided to try to raise the money to buy back his dad’s buck. He set up a GoFundMe and managed to raise approximately $15,000.
“After some time, I knew there was no way the rest of the money was going to come up,” Matthew says. “So I dropped it, and everybody was refunded [the money they pledged].”
When he realized that buying back his father’s buck wasn’t in the cards, Matthew decided to try for the next best thing — a replica.
“I tried getting a replica from Libby, but he told me I couldn’t because he didn’t have the replica rights,” Matthew says. “But he was very happy to be in contact with me because, over all those years, nobody who owned that deer even knew it was from Kansas.”
Harvey Libby had attempted to have the Daniels buck certified with the Boone and Crockett Club. But he couldn’t persuade the elder Daniels to sign the paperwork, Libby told the Eagle.
“I gave a bunch of information to Libby,” Matthew says. “He wanted my dad to sign some paperwork to get it entered in Boone and Crockett, but my dad said he wasn’t signing anything unless he would work with us to get a replica.”
Libby eventually sold the mount to Ohio antler collector Keith Snider for an undisclosed amount before he and Daniels could work out an agreement to have the buck officially registered with B&C.
“[Snider] didn’t want to give me any information. He didn’t want to work with us at all,” Matthew says. “I just found out one day that he had sold [the mount] to Bass Pro Shops. The only thing Snider told me was that it was supposed to be on display at the Wonders of Wildlife Museum at their headquarters in Springfield, Missouri.”
Matthew still wasn’t willing to abandon his quest to regain his dad’s buck.
“I spent two to three years sending emails and leaving voicemails with Bass Pro, just trying to get in contact with someone who could help me find this buck,” Matthew says. “I never once got a reply. I just wanted to find out what the heck was going on with this rack.”
The Daniels buck did finally make it into the B&C record book. In 2019, Matthew discovered that the buck had been entered by its new owner, Bass Pro Shops. Matthew says he and his father don’t recall signing any paperwork related to the rack’s entry.
“Boone and Crockett Club handles all entries with the trophy owner, who may or may not be the hunter,” B&C director of Big Game Records Kyle Lehrer tells OL. “When this deer was originally entered in our 27th Big Game Awards program, we did not know the hunter and it was listed as hunter Unknown and the owner as Maine Antler Shed & Wildlife Museum. As the mount changed ownership throughout the years, one of the owners tracked down the information and was able to verify the hunter. In an effort to have the most accurate and up to date information in our records, the decision was made that the information provided on the hunter was legitimate and therefore Mr. Daniels was listed as the hunter.”
Albert Daniels’ 200-inch Kansas buck is currently listed in the B&C book as the highest-scoring typical whitetail ever taken in the Sunflower State. The Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks still lists the Finger buck, and Matthew is working to change that, too.
“They want me to fill out a bunch of paperwork and stuff that I have to mail in,” Matthew says. “They need a copy of the Boone and Crockett score sheet and a signed affidavit from my dad.”
Matthew finally heard back from Bass Pro Shops in September. The company confirmed that they do have the original mount and that several replicas are on display in showrooms across the country. Matthews was told that the original mount that had once hung on his father’s wall would never be publicly displayed, which likely means it is destined to collect dust in storage for the foreseeable future. Matthew says he doesn’t believe the company will ever sell it and that the buck will probably never return to Kansas.
A representative from Bass Pro Shops also informed Matthew that they would help him get his own replica of the buck’s antlers from a well-known antler reproduction company based in Wisconsin called Antlers by Klaus. Because the reproduction company had already made replicas for Bass Pro, they were quickly able to make a replica for the Daniels family.
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“I had it at my door in 4 weeks,” Matthew says. “That was wild. I’ve been trying to see these antlers for seven years, and now I have a replica in my possession.”
The replica antlers are with a Wichita taxidermist, who is using a cape from a buck Matthew shot with his bow this past October to recreate the original shoulder mount Albert Daniels sold decades ago.
“They’re going to have it ready for me by Christmas,” Matthew says. “My dad doesn’t know anything about it.”
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