Video shows buck taking shelter inside Michigan church on state's first day of hunting season

A 10-point buck sought sanctuary inside a southern Michigan church on opening day of the state's firearm deer hunting season. Pastors at Grace Christian Fellowship in Sturgis encountered the buck inside the church's auditorium on Monday before it leapt through a window and back into the wild.

A video the church posted on Facebook shows the buck wandering around the church.

Pastors Amanda and Luke Eicher and Justin Wickey erected barricades in a hallway to try to keep the animal from the rest of the church. At one point, it climbed stairs to a balcony.

"That's where we have our computers and sound board, and I thought he's going to, like, just tear everything up. So my focus was to get him back downstairs," Luke Eicher told CBS affiliate WWMT.

The buck did not damage the equipment on the balcony. Instead, he ran around for a bit before climbing down the stairs and jumping out the window he originally came in.

"I was just shocked by how high he could jump," Amanda Eicher said. "I was amazed at how big he was."

The buck didn't appear to have any gunshot wounds and was bleeding just a bit from what appeared to be cuts from the glass, she told the station.

"I was a little sad that we didn't actually take a little time to pray with him before he went out to face the world on the opening day of deer season," Luke Eicher told the station.

Besides the broken window, the only other damage was blood stains on the carpet. The pastors said they hope the video will bring people joy.

"We all need reasons to laugh, especially with the hard seasons from the past two years," Eicher said. "I'm glad we could provide some laughs."

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• Michigan