Joe Merritt, age 41, of Middletown, Indiana had some target bucks he was after the first week of November during the state archery deer season. This is the first year he had cell cameras out to monitor multiple areas, and they proved to be a critical tool for taking the buck of a lifetime.
“On Tuesday, November 3 I got a trail camera photo of a huge buck sent to my cell phone from a very small woodlot that was my least favorite place I had to hunt,” Merritt tells Outdoor Life (he did the interview after just spending a morning hunting rabbits with his beagles). “The photos were of a huge buck that I’d never seen anywhere before.”
The next day the same cell phone camera got photos of the buck again. And the next morning, Nov. 5 at 3:55 a.m. he got photos of the huge buck again from the same camera in the same small wooded area.
“I knew I had to go after that buck right then,” says Merritt, who owns a coffee distribution company. “I left immediately and was in my saddle hanging from a thin tree well before dawn.”
Merritt listened to deer in the woods around him long before daybreak. He wanted to be in his stand early to not disturb deer. He believes the spot was a bedding area near a sanctuary of private property where no hunting is allowed.
As an overcast dawn broke, he had a small 8-point buck come by his stand. Almost an hour later a doe showed.
“She kept looking behind her as she moved my way,” says Merritt. “She kept coming to me and flopped down and bedded just 35 yards away. The whole time she was looking back, and I was a little puzzled until the giant buck I had on camera showed up.”
But the giant buck moved toward the doe and bedded down near her, just 37 yards away.
“That’s when the chess game began,” says Merritt, who is also a dedicated houndsman who’s pursued raccoons and bears with dogs. “I was hanging from a very small diameter tree, and both deer were bedded close, and there was no chance for a bow shot while they were lying down.”
Merritt sat in his stand, quiet and still, for four hours before the doe finally got restless, stood, and walked toward Merritt. She was feeding on browse as she moved his way.
“That’s when the buck stood up, and started following her,” Merritt says. “The doe was right underneath me watching back at the buck when he turned and gave me a full broadside shot at 22 yards.”
Merritt made a perfect shot on the biggest deer of his life.
“I saw him running and blood was blowing out everywhere,” said the bowhunter. “I didn’t see or hear him fall. But I knew the shot was perfect and the buck would be easy to find.”
The doe was still feeding under his stand after Merritt shot and the buck ran.
“I just broke down in the stand, shaking and talking to myself about what just happened,” he says. “It took about 10 minutes for me to de-escalate and comprehend what had just happened.”
Then he climbed down to the ground and walked to where he’d last seen the buck. He walked right to the downed animal that was only 60 yards from where his arrow had struck it.
“I walked up to him and placed my hands on his rack and thanked the Lord for what had just happened,” says Merritt. “Then I phoned my wife and friends.”
Shortly, his close pal Jared Leppink joined Merritt in the woods and the two of them loaded the buck into an UTV. Then they shot photos of it, dressed the deer, and caped it.
While the buck has a massive rack, Merritt said the deer only weighed about 200 pounds – not a big animal for east-central Indiana, which regularly gives up 250 to 300-pound whitetails.
“I don’t think the buck was that old,” Merritt says. “The teeth were not very worn. I think he was between 3.5 to 5.5 years old.”
When pictures of his buck hit social media it created a wave of folks contacting him.
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“I had to turn off my phone for 24 hours,” he says. “About eight different hunters had been after that buck and showed me photos of it. Some had shed horns from the buck from prior years. We figured I shot my buck 12 miles away from one hunter who thanked me for shooting the deer.
“I asked him why he was thanking me. He said, ‘Well now I know you got him, and I don’t have to keep passing other good bucks waiting for the 23-pointer to show up.’”