I killed a merriam last year I wish I had weighed. I took everything on that trip but a scale. It was in west central NE and I’m just using my best educated guess to say he was between 26-28 lbs. I’m very confident in that estimate. By far the heaviest bird I’ve ever killed. It shocked me and my son when we picked him up. He was considerably larger than my sons bird from the same place. His tail fan is also much larger than anything else I’ve fan mounted, except that 23 lb eastern from here. And interestingly, that 23 lb eastern had 20 tail feathers. Count feathers in all your fans. Most have 18. I’ve never killed one with 20 except him.