Pennsylvania is one of the best states for hunting, whether it be for black bears, elk, or whitetail deer. In 2001, the state held its first elk hunt, nearly 90 years after reintroducing elk from Yellowstone National Park and working with organizations like the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation to support elk habitat around the state. Good elk habitat also means good whitetail deer habitat.
Whitetail deer live across the Keystone State, which ranks fourth in the nation for the harvest of antlered ungulates. Pennsylvania also consistently ranks among the top states for antlerless (doe) harvests. The annual hunting season offers hunters a chance to help with population management, thereby reducing damage to forests.
With such a robust hunting tradition and culture, Pennsylvania has set a number of incredible whitetail deer records, but only one can sit at the top of the lists in the two recognized categories: typical and non-typical. The story of the typical trophy’s journey to the Boone and Crockett Club’s 31st Big Game Awards Judges Panel is perhaps even more impressive than the rack itself, which at the time of its scoring was large enough to earn a spot among the top five all-time typical whitetails.
The Boone and Crockett Club developed an antler-scoring system to measure the size of a hunting trophy. Awards are given in two categories, typical and non-typical, which refer to how closely antlers adhere to recognized standards of symmetry.
©Tom Reichner/Shutterstock.com
The Journey to the Record Books
To map the Kyress buck’s journey to the record books, one would have to begin at the story’s end—the Boone and Crockett Club’s 31st Big Game Awards Judges Panel—and work backward.
In 2022, Boone and Crockett official measurers crowned the Kyress buck the Keystone State’s state record for largest typical whitetail deer. At the time of its scoring, the Kyress buck earned a spot in the top five all-time typical whitetails with a score of 204-6/8 inches. The score is incredible, to be sure, but the story behind its discovery makes the trophy all the more special.
In June 2018, the Pennsylvania Trappers Association held its annual rendezvous at the Perry County Fairgrounds in Port Royal. As a vendor at the event returned to his vehicle to retrieve something, he spotted a man carrying a truly stunning set of antlers. He approached and asked questions. The man with the antlers could only reveal that he’d recently purchased them from an antiques shop that was going out of business. He paid $40 for them. The vendor offered him $100, which the man accepted. Once inside the event venue, another vendor recognized how special the antlers were and offered to double the first vendor’s offer.
Sometime in 2019, the Kyress buck finally got its day in the sun, as the trophy found its way into the hands of an antler collector who had it submitted for scoring.
Turns out, the Kyress buck sat in a partitioned area of a now-closed antiques store in Boyertown, Pennsylvania, and no one from the public was even aware of its existence for 20 years. It ended up in that shop sometime after the year 2000.
That year, Luke Alderfer stopped at a yard sale being held by Mrs. Frederick Kyress in eastern Pennsylvania, where he spotted the rack along with 30-40 other decent-looking and -scoring racks. He asked to purchase the largest rack but was told he needed to buy them all. He left to acquire more funds, but when he returned, all of them were gone.
According to North American Whitetail, “Luke learned the antlers were from a deer taken by the woman’s late husband, Frederick Kyriss. Mrs. Kyriss told Luke that all the antlers were of locally taken deer, including the huge typical. She remembered it as having been taken ‘sometime in the late ’60s or early ’70s.'”
There are only about two dozen or so 200-inch-net typical whitetails in the record books. It’s not a common occurrence to harvest a buck of this size.
©Tom Reichner/Shutterstock.com
“Boone and Crockett records indicate that Frederick Kyress (other sources spell his name Kyriss) was hunting near the Graterford Prison, roughly 30 miles northwest of Philadelphia. Kyress owned a farm there, and sometime between 1958 and 1962 this buck was making a dash across the farm. That’s where Kyress killed the buck… . Someone, perhaps Kyress himself, tossed those antlers in a barn where they sat for 40 years—alongside dozens of other impressive antlers.”
No further details of the hunt are available, as Kyress passed away in 1993.
The Kyress buck no longer languishes away without its due credit. Today, the antlers are part of the King of Bucks collection and are on display at Johnny Morris’ Wonders of Wildlife National Museum and Aquarium in Springfield, Missouri.
Instead of being in the top five all-time typical whitetails at the time of its scoring, the Kyress buck would have been number one in the Boone and Crockett record books had it been scored after the required 60-day drying period in 1962. According to North American Whitetail, “Minnesota’s John Breen buck (202 0/8 net) was the official world record back then. That giant had been shot in 1918 but had gone unmeasured for decades. And the 206 1/8-inch James Jordan buck from Wisconsin (1914) took even longer to be officially scored. So the Kyriss buck could well have been an official world record for years.”
Today, the world record belongs to Milo Hanson for the 213-5/8-inch buck he bagged in 1992 while hunting on his property in Biggar, Saskatchewan, Canada.
