‘I Thought I’d Fall Out of the Tree.’ Missouri Hunter Tags Her Biggest Buck Yet

At 4 p.m. on Wendesday, Blair Merrigan was sitting in a tree stand watching a nice 8-point and some does about 500 yards away. Merrigan was hunting with her friend Levi Strachan, and their stand was in a cottonwood tree along a CRP field edge on a Northwest Missouri farm. The two were after a big 10-point.

“My husband Ethan had photographed the 10-pointer the previous weekend on the farm, and then Levi saw the buck that morning,” Blair tells Outdoor Life. “So, we set up on the field edge where Levi had spotted him.”

Blair had her eye on the 8-point when Levi noticed some movement in the CRP.

“I couldn’t see it at first, but Levi said a closer, bigger buck was coming toward us,” says Merrigan. “I moved in the tree to see the buck, and Levi made a low grunt call to him. The deer started walking right to us.”

Strachan videoed the buck as it slowly worked across the CRP field toward them.

“He just kept coming, and when he was at 35 yards, I aimed my crossbow, pulled the trigger, and shot him. I was shaking so bad I thought I’d fall out of the tree.”

The hunters watched the buck run, and then stagger and fall 135 yards from where it was hit. Other deer were still nearby, and they didn’t want to spook them, so the two hunters waited until dark to climb down from the tree.

They went to a nearby house, where Merrigan recruited her husband, Ethan, and some friends to help recover her buck. They got to the deer about an hour later.

Merrigan says the 10-pointer green-scored at 154 4/8s inches. It was missing part of a brow tine that had broken off, and had that brow tine been intact, the buck might have scored closer to 160 inches. Still, it’s her biggest buck yet after 25 years of hunting — and the first one she’s taken with a crossbow.

“I’m sure glad Levi and I slipped quietly out of that tree stand that evening after shooting my buck,” Merrigan says. “Because the next evening, Ethan returned to the same stand and shot the big 8-point buck we’d seen.”