Sherry Monroe is no stranger to big deer and neither is her husband, Donnie. She’s taken some great Kansas bucks of her own, and Donnie has tagged some true giants, including one we covered in September that broke the Buckmaster’s state record for nontypical muzzleloader whitetails. Donnie was filming Sherry on November 6, when an old buck came in and put on an incredible show. The couple was happy to share the video prelude to Sherry’s kill (below), which included some great footage of the buck challenging his fake rival.

How the Monroe’s Hunt Went Down

Though the buck was actually one the Monroes knew well, it wasn’t a deer they expected to see that afternoon. “He was kind of a walk-through deer,” Donnie explained. “Though he was really old—we figured he was 8-½ this fall—and we had a lot of pics of him over the years, he just didn’t spend that much time on the property.”

The Monroes set up a blind in a secluded food plot and staked out a Primos Scarface decoy, designed to challenge any mature buck and draw him into crossbow range. “Eventually some deer worked on to the field, and there was some chasing going on that included a 3-½-year-old buck,” Donnie said. Shortly thereafter, Donnie saw a couple of the deer looking off toward a ridge in the timber at something. He looked up there too and spotted a buck staring down at the food plot. 

When the old buck entered the field, he didn’t respond to the decoy immediately, as Donnie thought he might. “He goofed around with that 3-½-year-old a bit, then went over and worked on a mock scrape by a Scrape Stick,” he said. 

Donnie grunted at him, then snort-wheezed, and he came closer, but the deer got distracted and stopped and actually started eating. “I didn’t give up,” he says. “I kept grunting and snort-wheezing and finally you could see his whole demeanor change. It was like ‘OK, enough. I need to go over and take care of this punk.’ It was incredible to watch him bristle up and stop to paw the ground in front of the decoy, just like he was a bull.”

Close-up of whitetail deer antlers.
The Monroes gross-scored the buck at 165-4/8 inches. Donnie Monroe

Sherry Gets Her Shot

With the old buck face-to-face with the decoy, Sherry held the crossbow at the ready, waiting for him to give her a broadside shot. “When the buck finally turned broadside, the bolt was on its way and it absolutely crushed that deer,” Donnie says. “I could see him pumping blood as he trotted off a ways, then stopped for a second and just crashed. He never made it off the food plot.”

Read Next: How To Drop a Deer In Its Tracks

The ancient buck capped off an incredible season for the couple. “That deer had only a 12-inch inside spread,” Donnie said. “But he had incredible mass and 13 scoreable points. We gross-scored him at 165-4/8 inches, which is pretty amazing for a buck that’s basically a main-frame 8-point. If you take our bucks together, they total 396 inches of antlers. It’s pretty amazing that we each killed the best bucks of our lives in the same fall, and I look forward to what next year brings” 

If you want to watch the entire hunts for each of these great bucks, tune into Team 200 TV on the Pursuit Channel, or download the Waypoint TV app on your phone or device. 





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