Like the ripples a pebble makes in a body of water, one event can set off a chain reaction that produces long-lasting results. Tom and Catherine Murchison know that, and if it were not for a good rainy season in 1987, their lives might be totally different, and one of the state’s premier hunting expos might not exist.
The Murchisons started — and still run — the Arkansas Big Buck Classic, an event that hunters around the state have been attending for 25 years. Thousands of people attend the Arkansas Big Buck Classic every January, when hunters have a chance to tell their stories, show off their harvests and meet with vendors.
However, the Arkansas Big Buck Classic might not exist if Catherine had not found a note outlining the idea in one of Tom’s notebooks. And she would not have found that note if they were not dating. And they would not have started dating if they had not met in the summer of 1987. And they would not have met if Tom had missed the July 4, 1987, trip to Lake Hamilton to instead care for the crops on his farm.
“I was actively farming, and it had rained,” he said, reflecting on that year. “Farmers usually don’t get to go to the lake until it rains. It had rained, so all the farmers in the Coy, Arkansas, area — where I was at the time — had gone to the lake.”
Catherine was a student at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia at that time, and she and her friends were also celebrating Independence Day at Lake Hamilton. As fate would have it, she and Tom both went to the same bar that night, and Tom made his move.
“She walked in, and I said something to one of my buddies that I liked the girl in the yellow jumpsuit,” he said. “He told me I didn’t have a shot with her, and I might as well forget it.”
Well, he did not forget it, and after an introduction that night, the couple started dating. Catherine was studying marketing and advertising at Henderson State, and the Big Buck Classic started in 1990 as her senior marketing project.
“We were dating, and she had come down to the farm,” Tom said. “She was going to school the next morning, and she had forgotten her notebook to take notes. She asked if I had a notebook, and I found an old spiral notebook for her to use. She took it to class and came back to class and asked me, ‘What is this?’”
In the notebook, Catherine had found the first notes that Tom had made about an event for hunters to show off their trophy harvests. It wasn’t much, just an idea, and they discussed it that evening. Then Catherine asked the obvious question: “Why aren’t you doing it?”
Tom said he was busy with the farm and couldn’t find time to organize the event, so Catherine asked if she could use it for her senior marketing project.
“He said, ‘I’m farming. I don’t have time. But if you want to take it and run with it, just let me know what I need to do,’” Catherine said of Tom’s response. “I just knew I had to have money. I was a college student and had no money.”
The original concept for the Arkansas Big Buck Classic was much simpler than what it has become 25 years later. Originally, the event had a $10 entry fee. There was $10,000 total in prize money for first, second and third place.
When Tom and Catherine decided to go ahead with their plan, the first thing they had to do was find one more person to make the team complete.
“I’ve got the idea,” Tom said. “She’s got a marketing education. Now we need somebody who’s really into the hunting scene 24/7.”
Through connections Tom had in the hunting world, the name Dave Corley of Fin Feather ’n Fur Taxidermy in Jacksonville came up as someone who could help make the Arkansas Big Buck Classic a reality. Tom and Catherine didn’t know Corley, but Catherine called him up to see if he would be interested.
“His partner answered the phone,” Tom said. “He called for Dave and said someone was on the phone talking about a Big Buck Classic, and she said she could hear him coming around the corner, saying, ‘Oh, another fly-by-night deal.’”
Despite his reservations, Corley took the call and listened to Catherine’s pitch. Corley invited the pair to his house to talk about the idea, and he helped them fill in the holes in their plan.
“I remember him asking how we were going to judge the winner,” Catherine said. “We just said, ‘Well, by the biggest deer.’ Then he asked if we were going to score them, if we even knew how to score them. And we just looked at each other and realized we didn’t know how to score deer.”
Initially, Tom and Catherine were anticipating 3,000 hunters and estimated plenty of profits from the event, but it did not work out that way. Once the entry forms were in, there were 700 to 800 committed participants. Even then, the couple could not be sure of who would actually show up for the event.
On the day of that first Big Buck Classic, only 200 to 300 participants arrived. Despite the smaller numbers, Tom and Catherine quickly learned how ill-prepared they were for the event.
“The parking lot was full. We didn’t have food. We didn’t have drinks,” Catherine said. “Tom called up Domino’s Pizza and ordered pizza for everyone there. People were standing around for hours waiting to get everything done.”
At the end of the day, the inaugural Arkansas Big Buck Classic did not make a dime. In fact, Tom and Catherine lost money on the event. Still, they were proud that they had pulled it off, and they resolved to try one more time.
Catherine graduated from Henderson State in 1991, and that year, they had the second Arkansas Big Buck Classic. They increased the winnings from $10,000 to $20,000 and set up a booth at the state fair to hand out entry forms. Still, despite those efforts, they came out the event with another year in the red.
“We lost our tail end again,” Tom said. “We got about 1,100 people.”
The Murchisons are obviously optimists because they did not let two bad years scare them away from continuing the Arkansas Big Buck Classic. The event continued to grow, and now it is one of the biggest hunter events in the southeast — if not the biggest.
Throughout the last 25 years, Tom and Catherine have continued to learn more about running a large event. Corley stuck with them and now serves as the event’s master of ceremonies, and the team has stories from each year that demonstrate their adventures with the Arkansas Big Buck Classic.
In the sixth year of the event, for example, Tom learned about fire codes when the fire marshal showed up at the event. It was Big Buck Classic’s first year at the Little Rock Expo Center — now the site of Pulaski Technical College’s Little Rock-South campus — and attendees filled up the building.
“It was total chaos,” Tom said.
The parking lot was full, people were pushing baby strollers across the interstate to get to the event, and the fire marshal was not happy about the people-to-fire-exits ratio. Fortunately, Tom got an education in making sure the building was safe for all of those people, and the fire marshal did not shut down the event. The next year, the organizers were better prepared and up to code, something they were thankful for when the weekend came.
“At 3 o’clock on Saturday afternoon in the middle of the busiest time, a man hit the floor,” Tom said. The visitor was a diabetic, and his blood sugar had plummeted, but the ambulance was able to get in and out, and the man recovered. After that incident, Tom got a call from the fire marshal congratulating him on a job well done.
Several years ago, Catherine was able to leave her marketing job and focus on the Arkansas Big Buck Classic full time. Tom still works as a farmer, and he owns an aviation business, but the expo consumes a lot of his time as well.
For the Murchisons, the Arkansas Big Buck Classic is much more than a business or a big event. They have made countless friends through the expo, and they love to see the impact it has on people throughout the state.
Now that it has been going on for 25 years, there are some hunters who have gone to the event every year of their life. Some have started bringing their small children, and for many families, the expo has become a multigenerational annual event. There are still prizes to be won, but many attendees go home happy whether or not they win.
“The prize is really irrelevant,” Catherine said. “Your deer is your prize. Anything we give you on top of that is just icing on the cake. The real prize is you getting to share that with other hunters.”
The event also has a special focus on children, and Tom and Catherine said highlighting young hunters has been a big part of the Arkansas Big Buck Classic for many years.
“We have really focused in on the kids,” Tom said. “We work on keeping that tradition of ethical hunting, as well as family-oriented activities. We put every kid who brings a deer up on that stage. They get their picture taken, and we let them tell their stories.”
“I get emotional,” Catherine said. “When I see the kids, I realize that this is what it’s about.”
The 25th annual Arkansas Big Buck Classic will be held Friday through Jan. 25 at the Arkansas State Fairgrounds. Admission is $12 for adults, $5 for children ages 5-12 and free for children younger than 5. The awards presentation will take place at 4 p.m. Jan. 25.
For more information on the Arkansas Big Buck Classic, visit www.bigbuckclassic.com.
Staff writer Angela Spencer can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or aspencer@arkansas
online.com.