February 9, 2012
By Michael Pearce, Kansas.com
Charges have been filed against a Topeka man accused of poaching
a deer that could have broken a state record that has stood for more
than 35 years, according to the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks
and Tourism.
David Kent was charged in Osage County Court in
connection with the Nov. 11 shooting of a 14-point whitetail buck,
Wildlife and Parks information officer Mike Miller said Thursday.
Charges include hunting with an artificial light, hunting
during a closed season, illegal hunting from a vehicle and the use
of an illegal caliber for deer hunting.
The buck has been
unofficially scored at 198 7/8 inches of antler on the Boone &
Crockett system.
The deer was measured by an official
scorer, but hadn’t met the requirement for a waiting period of at
least 60 days after the kill to make the score official.
The
state record for a typical whitetail deer shot with a gun is 198 2/8
by Dennis Finger in Nemaha County in 1974.
Charges against
Kent were filed Feb. 1, and Kent was served court documents on
Monday, Miller said.
Kent brought the antlers to public
attention at the well-attended Monster Buck Classic last month in
Topeka, where he said he had killed the deer in northeast Kansas.
Photography surfaced at the show placing the buck alive, in
Osage County, earlier in the fall. Wildlife agents compared the
photo to the antlers and determined it was the same deer.
Kent was taken into custody and the antlers confiscated shortly
after he was recognized as having brought the largest typical
antlers to the event.
He confessed to shooting the deer
illegally, a law enforcement source said.
This is the third
Kansas buck with antlers that could qualify as a state record that
isn’t officially recognized.
A typical buck that scored 199
7/8 was shot by a rifle hunter in 1999.
It was confiscated
when it was learned the non-resident hunter used a relative’s
resident permit to tag the animal.
A typical mule deer
scoring about 207 typical points is on display at Cabela’s in Kansas
City, Kan.
It’s about 5 inches larger than the state record,
but Wildlife and Parks won’t certify it as the state record because
there’s no record of the person listed as the hunter having a permit
for the listed year.
Miller said the department is not
making any accusations of wrongdoing in the shooting of the deer.
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