Just a few weeks ago, 11-year-old Jenna Perryman learned how to measure and score deer antlers during a field trip with her Springfield WOLF school outdoor education class.
She had no idea she’d use what she just learned during her first-ever deer hunt with her dad David and brother Garrett.
Last weekend Jenna squeezed the trigger on her .243-caliber single-shot Rossi rifle and killed a massive white-tailed buck that likely will wind up in the world famous Boone and Crockett Club record books.
The 15-point buck weighed more than 200 pounds and scored 178 points on the Boone and Crockett scoring system. After the antlers dry for 60 days they’ll shrink a bit, but likely will still easily meet or exceed the minimum score of 160 to earn a place in the record book for a typical white-tailed buck.
Ironically, Jenna didn’t even plan to hunt during the Missouri Department of Conservation’s annual Early Youth Hunt weekend. She was happy just being in the tree stand near Boliver with her dad while her 14-year-old brother hunted from another tree stand nearby.
But mid afternoon, her dad decided to double check that the rifle was still accurately sighted in. He took a shot, then let his daughter give it a try.
“She shot it better than me,” he recalled. “It was right on the target. She had shot .22s, a .223 and a .243 at WOLF school during a trip to Andy Dalton Shooting Range and it didn’t seem to bother her a bit.”
Emboldened by her accurate shooting, Jenna decided she was ready to try for her first deer. With the sun dipping lower on the horizon Saturday, her dad spotted a doe about 50 or 60 yards away and handed Jenna the rifle.
“I was going to shoot anything,” Jenna recalled. “But then my dad said, ‘No wait! There’s a monster buck behind it!’ I saw it and went ‘whoa!'”
The big deer was partially obstructed by brush, so Jenna held off taking a shot to avoid wounding or missing the deer. She then noticed a much smaller buck to the right.
“It looked like it was going to try to fight,” she said. “But the big deer snorted and the little one walked away.”
Following her dad’s advice, she waited until the big buck walked towards them and suddenly turned broadside.
“I said, ‘Dad, I have a clear shot!’ I was thinking how I can’t mess this up, I can’t miss it. I aimed right behind the front leg where the heart and lungs are, like we learned at WOLF school.”
The bullet entered exactly where she aimed, but the deer bolted and ran. Jenna said the shakes set in as she realized she had shot her first deer.
Dad and daughter climbed down from their tree stand and looked for a blood trail but couldn’t find any trace of the animal.
“We looked for about an hour with flashlights but couldn’t find it,” David Perryman said. “I told her and her brother to don’t give up hope.”
He had an idea.
He directed Jenna and Garrett to go back to where the deer had been standing when it was hit and hold their flashlights as a marker for him to see.
“I took off 30 or 40 yards down the hill and found him dead,” he said. “It was a beautiful shot. The bullet didn’t exit.”