Nine-year-old Missouri girl upstages her little brother on opening day of the 2016 youth season.
Sharing a deer stand with a kid can be both incredibly rewarding and challenging.
Just ask brothers Scott and Jeremy Knox.
Ten days before Missouri’s 2016 youth season opened, Scott went out to the family farm to look for deer sign and retrieve trail camera images. He already knew the property’s historical vantage points, but he really wanted his 7-year-old son, Collin, to have the best chance at shooting his first buck.
Collin’s big sister, Bryleigh, had shot an 8-pointer during the 2015 season, both kids’ first as hunters.
Scott explored a side of the farm he’d never really hunted, and he was elated to find several scrapes. When he saw a 140-class buck among the images captured by a nearby trail camera, he set up a stand with Collin in mind.
While father and son would share the new setup, Scott’s brother, Jeremy, would take 9-year-old Bryleigh to a ground blind beside a bean field popular with deer. Scott had moved it about 80 yards from where it had rested previously.
“We see does there all the time,” Scott said. “That’s our go-to place if we want to see deer.”
Twenty minutes after daylight, a forkhorn strolled within range of Scott and his son.
“I asked Collin if he wanted to shoot it, and he got this great big grin and said ‘Yeah,’” Scott laughed.
After the boom, the young deer ran about 30 yards and, from the sound of the splash, collapsed in a nearby creek. Jeremy texted Scott a few minutes later, saying the shot had apparently spooked a big-bodied deer — probably a buck — that had crossed the field and entered the woodlot 80 yards in front of them.
He and Bryleigh were hoping it would step back out of the woods.
“About 30 minutes later, Jeremy sent another text saying Bryleigh was getting bored,” Scott said.
Jeremy spent the next couple of hours gently reminding his niece that the deer or another one might pop back out any second.
“It doesn’t take long for a 9-year-old to get bored,” Jeremy said. “Snacks help. And talking. You tell ’em to keep watching because you never know when a deer will appear. I kept whispering, ‘Any time, Bryleigh. Any time.’”
Although Collin was eager to go to where they’d last heard his deer, Scott wanted to sit tight for a while longer. Just before they decided to investigate, they heard Bryleigh shoot.
About the time the little girl’s patience grew thin, her uncle spotted the buck easing along the tree line. He’d just happened to glance out of the blind’s left window. He assumed it was the same deer they’d seen at 7:00 that morning,
After pointing it out to Bryleigh, he helped her into his lap so she would be in a position to shoot in that direction. It took awhile for her to acquire the deer in her scope.
“I could tell it was a shooter, a good buck for her, but I really had no idea it was that big,” Jeremy admitted.
Even when Bryleigh said she had it under the crosshairs, she seemed reluctant to shoot. The little girl wasn’t nervous, but neither was she in a hurry.
When Jeremy couldn’t stand the suspense any longer, he told her “Pull the trigger.”
“We were waiting for it to come out of the woods, but it didn’t,” Bryleigh said. “And then it finally did. I didn’t see how big it was until later.”
The Knox brothers swapped texts immediately after the shot. Jeremy confirmed the little girl had fired, but he didn’t know if the deer’s reaction was an actual slip, or if her bullet caused it to falter. His question was answered when they walked over to the spot and Bryleigh found a drop of blood.
Bryleigh didn’t see the deer react. Before she found the blood, she thought she’d missed. She says she doesn’t understand why her uncle was shaking.
Rather than follow the trail, Jeremy and Bryleigh joined in the recovery and field-dressing of Collin’s deer. Scott asked Jeremy if he thought she’d shot the 140-incher from the trail cam photos, and his brother said, “Nah, it’s not that big.”
When the family finally took up the trail of Bryleigh’s buck, the guys saw it and told the kids to stay back while they went to make sure it was dead.
“Seventy yards into the woods, I saw its big white belly. The antlers were towering above the brush,” Jeremy said.
“When we got up to it, Jeremy and I were just shell-shocked,” Scott agreed.
“Poor Collin was depressed. He’d been on top of the world before that,” he added.
Jeremy had driven the two hours from St. Louis to assist his brother.
“Scott has three little kids: Bryleigh and 7-year-old twins Collin and Kendall,” Jeremy said. “I went to help.”
Kendall hunted that evening, but they didn’t see anything.
Bryleigh still doesn’t understand all the hoopla.
“We were definitely more excited than she was,” Jeremy said. “One day, she’ll realize the magnitude of the buck she shot.
“She was excited when we got up to it, but that was just because she’d got a deer. That’s all she cared about,” he added.
“We live in Moberly, a town of only 13,000 people. Thanks to Facebook and a story in the local newspaper, Bryleigh’s now a celebrity,” Scott said. “All the older folks at church have been asking her about it.”
One of the things the fourth-grader remembers most is how hard the photo sessions were afterwards. The deer dwarfed her.
“My dad had to help me lift the head,” she said.
This article was published in the August 2017 edition of Rack Magazine. Subscribe today to have Rack Magazine delivered to your home.
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