Every hunting season seems to produce one deer that captures the imagination, the kind of buck that becomes legend long before anyone pulls the trigger. In this edition of The Hole Story, Zachary Hein follows the pursuit of “Ol’ Slick,” a mysterious Kansas whitetail that sparked debate, determination and more than a few theories around the campfire. Along the way, the hunt becomes a reminder that preparation, patience and trusted Hornady ammunition can turn fleeting opportunities into unforgettable moments in the field.

As I cranked my steering wheel left and into the abandoned Kansas homestead, my buddy Ned pointed to the stand of cottonwoods ahead of us as a massive grey deer did his best to disappear into them. 

“That’s him, he made it through the year!” 

Before he slipped from sight, we caught a glimpse of a tall, thick right-side antler. 

“He’s gotta be the same one. He wasn’t broken off on the left – it was slick.”

“He’s the buck I’m holding out for. I can shoot does in January if I need meat, but I’d love to get his genetics out of here,” he justified with a gleam in his eye. 

Unseasonably warm temperatures meant we were in our shirtsleeves, sitting on swiveling pool loungers and quietly catching up on life when a pair of does popped out from a grove of cedars to our south at a quick trot. Hot on their tails was a big-bodied buck with a single right side that might have been the makings of a 140-150” set of antlers. As the buck passed under our perch at 65 yards, Ned whispered as he looked through the binoculars at him.

“There’s nothing on that left side, just hair. No pedicle.”

He dropped his binos to his chest and reached for his rifle only to watch the trio disappear behind a slight rise before he could so much as get it to his shoulder. 

“Man, I should have shot him. Maybe he’s the reason we’ve been seeing so many young bucks without one side – bad genetics.”

We closed out the season without so much as a glimpse of the unique buck and in my mind, he was for the most part forgotten. But not for Ned. 

“I’m going to spend a couple days in the dunes looking for him, that’s the only buck I’m after,” he said, chewing on his lip.

With Kansas’ rifle deer season opening on a Wednesday, I joined him on the property Thursday night with expectations that two days of hunting would have relaxed his focus and he’d be more open to shooting some of the bigger bucks on the property. If anything, he was even more fired up. 

“I’ve been seeing a couple smaller bucks that have his genetics – missing their left side. I’ve got to get him out of here…”

Splitting up for Friday’s morning sit, I saw what he meant. Perched on a cliff overlooking the river, I watched through my binoculars as a solid 3 ½ year old picked his way through the cottonwoods and locusts, a thick, single polished right antler on his head. From 300 yards I couldn’t see evidence of anything on his left side, though he didn’t seem big enough to be our grey ghost.

Friday melted into Saturday and with it came reinforcements – Ned’s father John and my wife doubled our numbers and our chances of seeing the big buck. After listening to Ned’s talk of Ol’ Slick for the last month, the gleam in John’s eyes said it all. He was gunning for him first…

The property itself functions as a thoroughfare – a superhighway for deer as they get squeezed into the river bottom when passing from the high pastures and crop fields to the thicker protected bedding areas. 

With John sitting in the historically high-traffic tree stand in the river, Ned on the Sandy Knoll and my wife and I in a newly installed Muddy Quad Pod deeper in the sand, we settled in for the afternoon sit.

“The one in front, is that him?” she asked excitedly. 

Looking through the binoculars, I could see one healthy right side with an absolute spear of a brow tine, but the left side was devoid of antler. 

“To be honest, I don’t know. He’s a decently old deer for here, so if you’re happy with him, pick your shot!” 

At 220 yards and with him still moving, I started calling out yardage updates knowing that she’d never pull the trigger until he stopped. As he got to 300 yards, he took a left turn and slowed to a walk, skirting a wall of thorny locust saplings but disappearing behind the tip tops of a stand of cedars midway between us and him. 

“The next opening he’s going to step into will be right at 300 still, maybe 305 yards.”

We waited. It wouldn’t be the first time a buck completely disappeared on us in that same spot, but at least she was set up and ready with a solid rest and time to settle. The seconds dragged on to minutes and no matter how many times I jumped the binos from opening to opening, he didn’t appear. 

A quiet whisper took me a second to register, “There he is.”

In a split second, she clicked off the Sako’s safety and the 300 Win. Mag. erupted, scaring the bejesus out of me as it sent a 150 gr. SST out over the sand. I had just located the buck in my binoculars, but at the shot I lost track of him as well as my wits. 

“Holy cow, that scared me,” I chuckled. “Did you get him?”

“You weren’t looking?”

I struggled to search for any indications but there was no sign to be seen – no white tail flagging through the trees, nothing. 

After glassing for a minute or two, I turned to her inquisitively. 

“How did the shot feel? How was your hold?”

“Perfect. The rest was good, I wasn’t rushed. Held for 300 but didn’t see anything after the shot. You really weren’t looking?”

I let out a big sigh. 

With the light starting to dip and knowing that Ned and his father were also tromping around on the property, we decided to head to the spot she last saw him to see if there was any sign. Descending from our platform we skirted the thick stand of cedars and trudged through the sand, trying to approximate the heading needed. Looking back, there was no sign of our previous perch, completely obscured from view by the trees. Picking a heading that looked right, we continued on, topping a slight swell when I grabbed my wife by the shoulders and congratulated her. 

“What! Where? I don’t see him.” 

A full foot shorter than me, I set her on a line and twenty feet further she caught the glint of an antler as the big-bodied buck laid in final repose. A wave of visible relief washed over her, followed by an ear-to-ear grin. 

Picking up his head, she brushed the freshly caked sand from his left side to reveal a stub of an antler. A little more cleaning revealed a clear break – he wasn’t Slick. 

“Ha! Can you believe I finally shot my first buck?”

“Not just that, you dropped him in his tracks. He didn’t even take a step – great shot!”

She surveyed him from nose to tail, still shell-shocked at her success. 

“Is it just me, or is he really big? Like, bigger than all the deer you guys normally shoot. Oh, do you need to tell John and Ned to quit looking for the buck?” she asked.

John answered on the second ring, and I could tell he was upset. They’d been hard at it in the failing light and besides a few hairs, they hadn’t found a drop of blood. 

“Dawn’s got a buck down, and it’s the same one you shot. Yes, I’m serious. Can you bring the truck around?” I passed along our location, then hugged my wife who was now shaking as the adrenaline started to fade from her system. 

Dark descended and eventually a set of headlights appeared at the top of a far-off dune, rising and falling with the undulations in the sand as it closed the distance. Pulling up next to us, John hopped out and ran over to give my wife a hug. It was obvious his stress and anxiety had transformed into happiness the moment he heard Dawn had tagged the same buck he’d been worrying over. 

It took three of us to hoist him up onto the tailgate – he was easily 200 lbs. and likely a bit more than that. Once he was to the cleaning shed and hooked to the wooden gantry, we’d cleaned countless deer on, the creaks and groans of the framework made us pause multiple times before his full weight was even in the air. 

“Man, he’s big, I thought this’d be him,” Ned shook his head. “He’s still out there...”

The next day Ned and John headed out for the final day of the rifle season, but Dawn and I stayed back since our cooler held nearly two deer’s worth of meat already. We didn’t hear a peep from the pair until just after sunset when a text rattled through on my phone.

“I got him!” it read.

Loading up my knives and vacuum sealer, I headed to the skinning shed to meet him. Pulling up, Ned already had the buck on the gantry and was starting to get the skin off.

“Well, it’s not him either,” he said with a smile and a shake of his head.

One big right-side antler was opposed by a broken-off stub nearly two inches in diameter, snapped right at the same spot as Dawn’s had been. With two extra points than Dawn’s but a bit less mass, they both would have taped somewhere north of 145 inches had either rack been complete. 

As I ran support bagging meat, my phone rumbled in my pocket with a call from one of my former bosses. Stripping off my gloves I stepped away to chat with Jason Morton, a fellow who has hunted the world over several times. 

“Any luck out west?” he asked.

I relayed to him the stories of our successes, along with our tongue-in-cheek reasoning on why we’d seen so many one-antlered bucks.

“Nah, you’re overthinking it. It’s just that big buck you’re after – he’s the dominant one and has so much power and only one antler to fight with, so he keeps on breaking off the left side of the bucks he goes up against. He might really be something if he’s breaking off deer that big. You probably should have waited and shot him instead of the other ones…”

Ned looked up from cutting and stopped when he saw the twinkle in my eye, only for it to fade when I realized our hunting season had ended half an hour after the sun dropped. 

“Next year, Ol’ Slick has got to go!”

“Now you’ve got the spirit!” Ned smiled ear-to-ear.