FATHERS & DAUGHTERS
The deer hunting season is a special time for dad and his girl
It wasn't so much a dress rehearsal as it was a chance to dress up. And Taylor Kunkel's mother, Nancy, didn't have to tell her twice.
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Taylor, 11, raced out of the dining room, returning with her blaze orange jacket - the price tag still attached - and stocking cap.
The tag removed, she pulled on the jacket and cap. Her father, Keith, grabbed her deer hunting rifle, and the two walked together to the woods in the back yard of the family's rural Little Falls home.
This wasn't the big moment - Taylor's first hunt. That won't come for a few days. Instead, Taylor posed proudly for photographs with her blaze orange attire, her rifle and her father.
Taylor Kunkel (left) posed with her blaze orange, her hunting rifle and her father, Keith, recently at the Kunkels' rural Little Falls home.
» Purchase reprints of this photo.Brainerd Dispatch/Brian S. Peterson
Hunt or no hunt, she smiled the smile of a girl content. Imagine her expression come Thursday, when she turns 12 - the legal age to deer hunt - and again will don blaze orange and her Remington .243 rifle and join her father in the woods.
Amber Hack also will be in a deer stand on her birthday - she turns 27 a day later. And with her father, Brad Horn of Baxter, by her side.
"I go for the scenery and to spend time with Dad," said Hack, who will be gunning for her first deer in this, her third hunt.
For years, deer hunting was something fathers shared with sons. But with an increasing number of women and girls getting involved in hunting, that's changing. And for that, Keith Kunkel and Horn are grateful.
"She pretty much told me," Kunkel, 39, said with a laugh, referring to how it was decided that Taylor would hunt this season.
"I just watched my dad shoot," Taylor said of how she became interested in deer hunting.
Amber Hack (left) and her father, Brad Horn of Baxter, recently sat in front of a pair of mounts that Horn bagged on the family farm northwest of Pillager.
» Purchase reprints of this photo.Brainerd Dispatch/Brian S. Peterson
So she took the required firearms safety course this last spring. Her mother joined her in the course, although she doesn't plan to hunt. At least not this year.
"When (7-year-old son) Tommy hunts, I'll make that my first hunt," Nancy Kunkel said. The Kunkels have another daughter, Abby, 9, but "she (Taylor) is more outdoors."
"I just wanted to see what she was learning," Nancy Kunkel added of the firearms safety course.
If her success in the course is any indication, Taylor will bag her first deer in her first season - and win the bet.
"That (dragging the deer) was hard. And it smelled bad, too," Taylor said with a laugh.
"In gun safety, my mom and I were the only ones who aced the test out of about 10," said Taylor, a sixth-grader at Mary of Lourdes Middle School in Little Falls. "And on the field day, when we were shooting bow and arrow, I got a bull's-eye. I was the only one. I probably will (try bow hunting), but I like (shooting) gun better."
And the bet?
"I want a buck. And I bet my cousin on who would get the biggest one," said Taylor, whose cousin also is 12 and hunting for the first time.
Taylor and her father will hunt on the family's land near Hillman this week, then with Taylor's uncles and grandfather the next week.
Taylor, who also enjoys figure skating, tennis and gymnastics, tagged along with her father during last year's hunt, when he bagged a deer.
"She was with me last year and helped me pull it (the deer) out. We had to drag (the deer) a little bit," he said.
"I tried to get her to help me gut the one last year, but she said it will be a while before she does that."
"That (dragging the deer) was hard. And it smelled bad, too," Taylor said with a laugh.
Unlike Taylor, it took Hack a while to warm up to the idea of deer hunting.
"I wasn't into it when I was younger," said Hack, a revenue audit clerk in the accounting department at Grand Casino Mille Lacs. "I was sort of a rebel. But Dad asked me one year. I had gone through gun safety and said I'd try it. I wasn't excited until I got out there and took a shot."
Hack got off a shot in each of her first two hunts.
"She gets pretty excited," Horn said. "She said, 'I got it, Dad, I got it ..."
"We tracked it and found tuffs of hair," Hack said.
"Dad took the shot away from me," she added with a smile. "It was a big doe."
Horn hoped to get his deer the first weekend of the Minnesota firearms deer season, which opened Saturday, then join Hack this week - she'll start hunting Wednesday - to help her land her first deer.
"It's supposed to be her shot first," Horn said. "And if she misses ...
"Then Dad goes for it," Hack said. "We sit in the stand together. I like to walk around, too. I kicked up the deer for Dad (last year)."
Kim Horn, her mother, will join Hack on her birthday.
"I'm going. Not hunting, though," Kim Horn said matter-of-factly.
They hunt on the family farm about 15 miles northwest of Pillager. And this year, Hack will have her very own gun - a used Marlin .30-30 she got as an early birthday present from her father.
In her first two hunts, she used her late grandfather's .30-06. Brad's father, Clarence, died Nov. 12, 1983, at age 71 - in his deer stand on the family farm.
"He had gotten a deer and went back up in the stand," Horn said.
"His gun was still in his arms," Kim Horn said. "And he had a smile on his face."
Brad Horn and Hack smiled often as they talked about their hunting experiences together - and those yet to come.
"This year, I won't take your deer," Horn said, laughing.
"This year," Hack said with a smile, "it's all about me."
BRIAN S. PETERSON may be reached at brian.peterson@brainerddispatch.com or 855-5864.