Posted on 05/28/2015 3:08:49 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Two months ago, Taylor Herrick rode in an open convertible waving to blue-and-gold-wearing Bulldog boosters who hailed her as Pardeeville High School’s Homecoming queen.
On Saturday, she perched on the gate of a pickup, showing off the 13-point buck she’d bagged, just minutes after the opening of Wisconsin’s nine-day gun deer hunting season.
It would be hard to venture a guess as to which event made Taylor smile more brightly.
The pickup holding the big buck was parked in front of the Angie Williams Cox Library in downtown Pardeeville, and Taylor was tickled to share her story with passers-by.
She and her father, Tim Herrick, were in a deer stand in Marquette County at about 6:45 a.m. as the gun deer season got off to its foggy, misty start in Columbia County.
“He came out running through the opening in the cedars,” she said. “Then he gave us his white tail, and I thought he was going to run back into the woods, but he turned around, and I tried my shot.”
This is the second deer that Taylor has bagged in four hunts.
As of Saturday afternoon, she had a leg up on Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Secretary Cathy Stepp, who was hunting in central Wisconsin while holding a statewide press conference call, but had not yet gotten her deer.
DNR officials Saturday reported a statewide “uptick”in the number of women who obtained licenses for this gun deer season, which runs through Nov. 30.
Although the total number of licenses issued as of midnight Saturday, 509,830, is down about 4 percent from last year, female participation in the hunt is up. The DNR reports that 60,880 of the license holders, or about 10.3 percent, are women.
Women also represented 35 percent of the adult first-time gun deer license holders and about 36 percent of the first-time junior gun deer license holders, the DNR reported.
“I think,” Stepp said, “that I’m uniquely qualified to encourage women in hunting, since I am a woman — and a relatively new hunter.”
Stepp said the DNR has encouraged women to join in the hunt by offering them education not only in safe hunting, but also in the “good healthy food” that game such as deer can provide.
Also, she said, when women join the hunt, “you can establish new family traditions.”
At the Portage VFW Post 1707, a “hunter’s widow shopping extravaganza” featured various vendors’ booths. But while there were plenty of women in attendance, only a few said they were there to keep themselves occupied while the men in their life hunted deer.
One of these was Jude Bremer, who went to the Pampered Chef booth to buy a cutting board so she can butcher the 8-point buck that her husband, Matt, had early Saturday morning.
“I used to hunt,” she said, “but now I don’t want to get up at 4 a.m.”
Linda Brodeur of Poynette said she loves the outdoors, though she prefers fishing to hunting.
So, while her husband Bob was hunting — he sent a picture of his 9-point buck to her cell phone — Linda oversaw a booth at the VFW for KAMO, or Kids and Mentors Outdoors, an organization that promotes outdoor activities, such as hunting and fishing, for young people.
“We are so blessed in Wisconsin to have so many opportunities for outdoor activities,” she said.
Taylor Herrick couldn’t agree more.
The buck that she bagged is a beauty by anyone’s standards, which is why she hopes to mount the head and shoulders, after the meat is harvested.
Her father, Tim, didn’t know offhand how big the buck was, but he did know that it took some doing to haul it away.
“It was very heavy pulling it down the hill,” he said. “And we stopped a few times to look at it.”
Is there is an implicit warning to future potential husbands in that picture. “Don’t fool around, I’m a good shoot”
Don’t tell hubby but him teaching me to shoot when we were young moved him up from an annoying little pain to ok status.
It was a good shoot - and she's obviously a good shot, as well.
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