Kiri Brown
Kiri Brown
Some friends were kind enough to invite us to their ranch in Columbia, California to let my daughter Kiri go on her first deer hunt. Kiri, who is 16, passed her Hunter Safety Course last summer. She has been practicing her shooting ever since. She started off a little afraid of the noise and the kick. . . but after her first range session, the one-inch groups she fired showed she had quickly become accustomed to the recoil. I had loaded up some of the new Barnes 140-grain TTSXs, which my rifle seems to really like, and we were ready to go. We left for the ranch on the 25th and got up on the morning of the 26th to start her hunt.
Not long after dawn, we saw some deer climbing the hillside about 500 yards away. As they went into the brush, we moved up on them through the trees. Once we got close enough, we could see there were three bucks in the group, along with a few does. Most were hidden by brush.
As we took our final steps to get into shooting position, a half-dozen other deer burst from behind us about 50 yards away. Luckily, the running deer kept the attention of those we were stalking. After a few moments to steady her rifle on a fencepost, Kiri lined up her shot. I told her to choose the deer she wanted so long as she had a clear shot. The range was just under 200 yards. She took the buck dead center in the right shoulder, and the bullet angled left to exit at the rear of the ribcage—a perfect shot. The excitement showing on her face made it all worthwhile (as you can see from the picture).
—Christian Guntert
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