Pennsylvania Game News - February 2022 - 5

about the racks he shows.
" As a collector, I always like to know
and share the history of these deer, " he
said. But he knew next to nothing of the
Kyriss buck.
He came to own it just a few years ago.
In Massachusetts attending a banquet of
the Northeast Big Buck Club, Fish was
approached by a hunter asking if he'd
seen the 200-inch whitetail recently discovered
in Pennsylvania. A friend had it,
the man said, and might be willing to sell.
Fish was skeptical.
" You hear these stories all the time, "
he said. " As soon as you hear 200-inchnet
typical, a red flag goes up because
there aren't that many. They're pretty
rare. "
He traded phone numbers with the
man anyway, saying he'd be interested
in talking when he returned from a
vacation in Maine. Weeks went by. Fish
made a few calls, not expecting anything
to come of it.
Then he finally got a look at the buck
and was flabbergasted.
" What a very awesome deer it is, "
Fish said. " Just what a great look it has. "
He bought the deer for $5,000, then
started researching it. That included posting
to Facebook, where Alderfer saw it
and immediately recognized it.
" I was like, man, I'll never forget that
deer, " he said.
He contacted Fish and the two men
set about trying to uncover the deer's
backstory. That took some serious sleuthing,
as online records indicate Frederick
Kyriss died in 1993. Fish said his wife is
believed to have passed on as well and,
while it's thought they had children, no
one was ever able to track them down.
But Alderfer did talk to some local
" old timers " who remembered Frederick
Kyriss. They credited his monster deer
FEBRUARY 2022
200-INCH CLUB
Maybe the deer weren't there. Maybe
they were, but no one scored them.
Whatever the reason, records of
200-inch-class typical whitetails were even
scarcer in the early 20th century than today.
The Boone and Crockett Club created the
first standard scoring procedure for North
American big game in 1902, then published
its first record book in 1932.
" Compared to today's record books, it
included relatively few specimens that were
listed by simple criteria of length and spread
of horns, antlers or skulls, " reads the Boone
and Crockett website.
Those early days produced just two
200-inch-class typicals. One taken in 1914
ranks No. 2 overall, and one taken in 1918
ranks No. 11.
Then, no 200-inchers were listed for
more than four decades.
Hunters finally put five in the book in the
1960s. They added two in the 1970s, one in
the 1980s, six in the 1990s, four in the 2000s
and one in the 2010s.
" They're definitely spread out, " said
Boone and Crockett's Justin Spring. " You
look at the years, the top 10 typicals span
something like 70 years, other than what
you might call the one historical record
from 1914. "
5
in part to iron bars, concertina wire and
armed guards.
PRISON BREAK
Kyriss had the good fortune - at least
in one sense - to live near to a prison:
State Correctional Institution-Graterford,
now known as State Correctional
Institution-Phoenix. The facility sits on
nearly 1,700 acres.
More than half of those are planted
in corn by local farmers, so there's food
aplenty for deer. There's security, too.
Hunting there is, at best, very limited.
In 2020, for example, SCI-Phoenix
hosted three one-day antlerless hunts,
one for youths, one for veterans and
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2022

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