Bowhunter Tags Giant Kansas Buck with Double Drop-Tines

Dalton Hiltibrand has been watching a giant buck on an 80-acre parcel of private land in Nemaha County, Kansas. Trail camera photos from 2020 showed that the huge buck, nicknamed “Paraglider,” would move onto nearby farms.

“He showed up again in August,” Hilitibrand tells Outdoor Life. “But we only had a few photos of him during the day and night.”

On Nov. 15, Hiltibrand decided to make his move. With help from his friend Loren Henry and Henry’s two sons, they hung a lock-on stand near a spot where the buck had been photographed in previous years. Cellular cams captured photos of the giant buck over the next two days.

“I checked my phone the morning of Nov. 17, and there he was, and I knew I’d better try him at the stand that evening,” says the 25-year-old bowhunter from Seneca, Kansas. “A cool front had come through, and it looked good for hunting, so I got up in the tree stand around 2 p.m.”

He’d only been up in the stand for about 20 minutes when he started seeing does moving between a rye field and a nearby bedding area with thick cover.

“A bit later I heard a deep growling grunt,” Hiltibrand says. “It was coming from about 100 yards away in some thick evergreens. I thought it was from a mature buck, so I called softly with my grunt call, but nothing happened for about 20 minutes.”

Then, a 10-point buck appeared, walking within 40 yards of Hiltibrand before chasing does. Around 4:15 p.m., he heard a buck grunting from a different direction and spotted a doe walking toward the sound. Hiltibrand watched the doe closely as the giant buck finally showed itself.

“That’s when the smaller 10-point buck spotted the doe in the ditch and started chasing her,” Hiltibrand said. “The bigger buck bristled up, snort wheezed, and started after the doe, too.”

The bucks ran the doe about 300 yards away from Hiltibrand. The doe then circled back, and the buck stepped into his shooting lane from 23 yards away.

At 4:50 p.m., Hiltibrand drew his compound bow and released, sending a 100-grain expandable broadhead into the buck’s chest.

“I saw the arrow hit him, and knew it was a good shot, passing almost completely through the deer,” he says. “He ran to a grassy area and laid down. I tried looking for him through binoculars, but I was shaking too much to get a good view.”

Hiltibrand quietly eased out of his tree stand and headed home. He called his friend Henry, then his father Mike and three brothers to let them know he’d made a good shot on the buck they all knew he was hunting.

They met at Hiltibrand’s house, where they watched football while they waited for the buck to expire. Four hours later, they went back to the tree stand to track the buck and found a blood trail right away.

“We followed the blood trail right to where I saw him in the grass, and he never moved, he was right there, dead,” Hiltibrand says.

Hiltibrand sits with the buck along with his dad, two brothers, and his friend Loren Henry. Courtesy Dalton Hiltibrand

The group loaded the massive buck into a truck and took it to Hiltibrand’s house. Once there, they compared its rack with some shed antlers they’d found last February and concluded they were from the same buck. They’d found the sheds roughly 70 yards away from where Hiltibrand shot the buck on Nov. 17.

Hiltibrand’s giant buck had an estimated live weight of 250 pounds. A local taxidermist gave it an unofficial green score of 235 inches.

“He’d broken off a couple of tines from fighting two weeks before I shot him, losing about 10 inches of antler mass,” says Hiltibrand, who noticed the broken tines when comparing the buck with past trail cam photos. “I’m still in awe about what happened. Patience, persistence, hard work, and sleepless nights paid off with lots of help from good friends like Loren Henry.”

Editor’s Note: This article was updated to clarify the location where the buck was killed. A previous version stated that Hiltibrand killed it in Nemaha County, Nebraska, when he actually killed the buck in Nemaha County, Kansas.