Ten-year-old Paisleigh Stephenson, a fifth grade student at Riverfield Academy, started out as an apprentice deer hunter, sitting in her dad’s lap in a deer stand when she was 4 years old.
She graduated to the point that her dad, while Paisleigh sat in his lap, allowed her to kill her first buck at the age of 6. Today, Paisleigh is 10 years old and continues to love to deer hunt.
We visited with her dad, Brandon Stephenson, a fireman with the Ouachita Parish Fire Department in Monroe. The family lives near Rayville.
“We have some family land in Morehouse Parish where we do most of our hunting,” Stephenson said. “We have several bucks on our place, and we keep up with them on our trail cameras.
The Chicken Foot stand
Paisleigh and her dad hunted on the morning of Nov. 21, but saw no deer. Her dad asked her if she wanted to hunt that afternoon.
“She told me she did and which stand she wanted us to hunt,” Stephenson said. “It’s one we call the ‘Chicken Foot’ stand. We have a long food plot extending out several hundred yards from the stand.
“We got settled in and watched a few deer on the plot, including a couple of small bucks that were busy sparring with each other. Then I looked up and watched another deer come out at about 300 yards. I got my binoculars and could tell is was a good buck.”
The pair watched the buck for a good 30-45 minutes as the buck fed along and was slowly headed in their direction.
“I had seen enough to tell Paisleigh that this was one we were going to shoot,” Stephenson said. “It was a deer I had never seen on our cameras. When it got to 220 yards, I told her to get on him. When she was confident she had him in her scope, I told her to go ahead and shoot when she was ready. She shoots a Savage Youth Model .243 rifle and she shot. The buck dropped in its tracks.”
A closer look
Walking down to take a close-up look at the buck, it sported 11 points with an inside spread of 17 2/8 inches. The main beams were over 26 inches each, with bases over 4 inches. The buck, which weighed 228 pounds, was determined to be probably 5 ½ years old. Taking the buck to Buckmaster official scorer Cecil Reddick, the rack scored 153 7/8 inches.
Paisleigh is an active youngster being a member of one of the top travel softball teams in the area, the Louisiana Bombers. Her younger sister, age 6, has already killed a deer herself.
“Somebody recently asked me how many deer I had killed over the last few years and I told him I have killed maybe two in the last five years. He asked why,” Stephenson explained, ”and I told him I’m no longer the hunter; I’m the guide.”