Seventh Grade Girl Gets Her First Elk
Photo shared by Kris Rice
Dawn poses with her elk.She saw a big one and her hand was on the trigger but she was shaking so much from excitement she knew she couldn’t hold the gun still enough to have a good shot. “I’m really surprised I got it because I was shaking so much from what my family calls ‘elk fever,’” said Dawn Rice, seventh grader at St. Francis Community High School.
This past weekend Rice went on an elk hunt and shot a big one with her father Ken Rice in Colorado. Rice has been shooting since she was 10 when she first got a Crickett (her first rifle) for Christmas. Rice has been preparing for this hunt for a long time. She practices her shooting by hunting deer and prairie dogs.
“I had a chance to shoot at another elk but it I couldn’t get a good shot I was shaking too much from excitement. This other bull was standing up broadside; I shot it and wounded it and looked like it was going to go down, but it went back to the pack. When we had another clear shot of it, I shot it again. This time it went down right away because the shot went straight through the heart,” said Rice. After she shot the elk she said she had to stifle her excitement because another guy was still trying to get one, but she saved the bullet and the ivories and will also be mounting the elk. One of the elk's antlers was clubbed, which means it is damaged and hanging down. “We took a lot of pictures of me on the elk and we went back because we had to go gut it and I was really excited and I got to help skin it a bit,” Rice said.
Next year Rice plans go go elk hunting again because it was quality family time and also wants to get another elk on the wall. She also said all the people were so nice there she wants to go back just to see them. When she came back to school she said a lot of adults thought her hunt was really exciting and cool. To all of the people who want to go elk hunting Rice advised, “Practice shooting and when you go out there have fun and don’t just think 'I have to get up so early.' Just have fun and when you see one shoot it and knock it down.”