“I thought I was going to fall out of the tree.” Missouri Hunter marks her biggest buck yet

At 4pm on Wednesday, Blair Merrigan was sitting in a treehouse watching a nice 8-point and some about 500 yards away. Merrigan was hunting with her boyfriend Levi Strachan, and their stand was in a cottonwood tree along the edge of a CRP field on a farm in northwest Missouri. The two were looking for a big 10 points.

“My husband Ethan had photographed the 10-pointer on the farm the weekend before, and then Levi saw the buck that morning,” Blair said. Outdoor living. “So we stood at the edge of the field where Levi had seen 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 there was a bigger, bigger buck coming toward us,” Merrigan said. “I went up into the tree to see the buck, and Levi made a low growling noise at him. The deer walked straight towards us.”

Strachan filmed the buck as he slowly worked his way 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 much I thought I was going to fall out of the tree.”

The hunters watched as the buck took off, staggered and fell 450 feet from where it was hit. There were other deer nearby and they didn't want to startle 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 her get her money back. About an hour later they reached the deer.

Merrigan says the 10-pointer scored green at 154 4/8s inches. Part of a broken brow tine was missing, and if that brow tine had been intact, the buck could have scored closer to 60 inches. Still, it's her biggest buck yet in 25 years of hunting – and the first she's taken with a crossbow.

“I'm sure glad Levi and I quietly slipped out of that treehouse that night after I shot my buck,” Merrigan says. “Because the next night Ethan returned to the same stand and shot the big 8-point buck we had seen.”