Cody Mohan | Mossy Oak ProStaff
Hunting Kansas is unique, depending on which side of the state you hunt. In the northeastern section where I live is lots of timber. When you go to the western section of Kansas, you’ll mostly see crop lands. Although there are different terrains in Kansas, there are big deer all over the state. Kansas homes lots of timber in the northeastern part where I live, but the entire state raises plenty of crops for the deer to feed on throughout the state. Also, numbers of oaks in the state produce all the acorns the whitetails ever can want to eat.
Although Kansas has everything required to grow big deer, we also have an abundance of cover where the deer can hide. One of my favorite places to hunt is a 700-acre tract of solid timber with croplands all around it. One of the fields in this 700 acres is planted in corn, with the other being planted in soybeans.
My biggest buck taken in Kansas scored 173 inches on Boone & Crockett. I took this whitetail when I only was 12 years old. I was hunting with my dad, Jim, west of Leavenworth, in a creek bottom. We were leaning up against a tree when we spotted my buck stepping out from the edge of a tree line. The buck was walking away from us. My dad had just brought me a brand-new .270 rifle. I was so excited once we’d spotted that big buck. Even today I remember my dad telling me, “Cody, just breathe.”
I aimed right behind the buck’s shoulder, and once I squeezed the trigger, the buck went down in the same tracks where he’d been standing. I remember that after the shot, my dad had to hold me down because I wanted to jump up and run to my big buck. Once I finally put my hands on that buck’s antlers, I was hooked on whitetail hunting for the rest of my life.
One of the big advantages I have being born and raised here in Kansas is I have numerous friends and family who allow me to hunt private lands. People who want to come to Kansas to hunt will find that our state has an abundance of public land, and much of that land is good ground for deer. Some of the lands that are now public lands were once private properties I hunted. This acreage today is all-access. Some of this public land receives plenty of hunting pressure, since Kansas has numbers of military people who work at Fort Leavenworth and enjoy deer hunting. That’s why Kansas’s walk-in properties receive lots of hunting pressure near where I live. However, Kansas has developed plenty of good white-tailed hunting all over the state.
Cody Mohan of Leavenworth, Kansas, a ProStaffer of 6 years, was born and raised in Kansas.
