Bowhunter Tags 194-Inch Buck for 60th Birthday

Kristi Purcell celebrates her Nov. 7 birthday each year by hunting deer and turkeys on her farm in northern Missouri. This year, her goal was to shoot a 150-class buck.

She’s tagged many 140-class 8-pointers in the past. Last year, while rifle hunting, she saw a mid-sized buck in the food plots but chose not to shoot, hoping to give him another year.

“He wasn’t what I wanted,” Purcell tells Outdoor Life. “He had some character but short points. So I passed on him last year. But this year, while bowhunting at the end of October, I saw him walking across a bean field. Although he was 200 yards away, I could tell he had long beams and good mass. I was excited, but I was shaking from the cold, so I never got a shot.”

A few weeks later, Purcell went hunting two nights before her birthday. A doe and fawns walked into an adjacent pollinator plot out of her sight. Purcell expected the deer to move back into the beans next to the timber where her tree stand was located.

“But I look over, and this guy is walking through the beans,” Purcell says. “He was about 150 yards out. I had a silhouette decoy in the timber to my right, and he was to my left. I grunted a few times, but he ignored me and walked toward the doe. Then he disappeared. But I thought they would go around the field edge, so I stayed ready. However, he suddenly appeared on the other side of the trees, in a fire lane, and he started walking straight at me.”

At first, Purcell wasn’t sure if the buck would meet the 150-inch mark. Kristi Purcell

Purcell drew her bow when the buck was behind a tree.

“So I’m at full draw, and he steps into this gap at 15 yards, but he’s looking right at me,” she says. “I’m concentrating, not looking at his antlers, just waiting for a better shot opportunity. He looks at the decoy, takes a few more steps, stops, and I shoot him at 15 yards. It knocks him down, and he turns and runs back into the plot where I can’t see him.”

Purcell immediately called her husband, Jeff, a retired Missouri game warden. In the fading light, they found some blood but couldn’t locate a trail. Purcell worried that she’d hit the buck too far back. They decided to wait until morning to start looking again. Purcell struggled to sleep.

The next day, family friends Terry and Debbie Hoyt came to help. After searching for a while, Purcell went down to a creek where she thought the buck might have bedded. And there he was.

“I screamed ‘I found him! I found him!’ and everyone rushed over,” Purcell says. “Our friend turned to Jeff and said, ‘She undersold her description of this deer.’ There was certainly no ground shrinkage.”

The buck was much bigger than she had thought. He had just under 50 inches of mass and a total beam length of 50 inches. Although his inside spread measured only 16 inches, this buck was huge.

“From all the angles I saw him, he didn’t seem that big,” Purcell says. “But oh my gosh, what a trophy.”

The buck had 18 scorable points and green scored 194 1/8 inches. Purcell will have a shoulder mount done by Hoyt Taxidermy in Brookfield, Missouri.

Jeff Purcell is a former Missouri game warden. Kristi Purcell

In her Facebook post, Purcell wrote that this wasn’t a bad way to say goodbye to her 50s. The hunt also took place on the 20-year anniversary of her father’s passing, so harvesting this deer on her family’s farm was extra special. Sharing the experience with her husband, who introduced her to hunting decades ago and now lives with ALS, made it all the more meaningful.

“He has always worked hard to make sure this happens for me,” she says. “So this was extra special.”