12-year-old girl makes moose-hunting history

[Pat McCotter]

12-year-old girl makes moose-hunting history
Pioneer Press (MN)
Updated: 10/21/2009 04:26:52 PM CDT
CHRIS NISKANEN



Kelly Holmin, 12, is a seventh-grader in Nicollet, Minn., who loves playing the flute and volleyball and just plowed through the teen-lit "The It Girl" book series.

"Definitely not a tomboy,'' her father, Jeff, a taxidermist, said of his eldest daughter. "She's kind of a girly girl who likes to wear makeup already."

A girly girl who shoots a Ruger Hawkeye rifle and just became the youngest Minnesotan to shoot a bull moose?

Well, that's Kelly Holmin, too.

"My dad says that in big-game hunting, it's all downhill from here," Kelly said after bagging her bull moose with a 58-inch antler spread on Oct. 13. "Maybe the next thing I do is put in for an elk license. My dad really wants to go to Africa, and maybe I can go there with him."

When a change in state law lowered the moose-hunting age to 10, Jeff Holmin asked Kelly if she was interested in applying for this year's hunt. She and her father take annual grouse-hunting trips to the Gunflint Trail, and Kelly bagged her first wild turkey last spring. She had a newly minted firearms safety certificate, so they decided to apply with her uncle Phil, who lives in St. Paul.

Jeff figured his daughter had about a 3 percent chance of getting drawn for the once-in-a-lifetime permit.

When the results were mailed to them in June, "she cried when she realized she got a permit. She was that excited," Jeff said.

The rest of the summer and early fall was spent preparing for the moose hunt. Kelly attended a youth deer-hunting camp put on by the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association and spent hours practicing with her rifle, a Ruger designed for a .308 but is necked down to a 7-millimeter shell, giving it less kick. She attended a moose-hunting orientation meeting. Her dad paid $900 for the rifle and scope and $500 for new boots, Gore-Tex jackets and pants and other rain and winter gear.

Then they headed to the Gunflint Trail for the Oct. 3 moose opener. Only bulls are legal during the season.

You could call it the ultimate father-daughter hunting adventure.

They slept in a 30-foot camper miles off the Gunflint Trail, and Jeff cooked and cleaned while coaching his daughter in the finer points of moose hunting. (Jeff bagged his own bull three years ago.)

"He's a good cook, a good griller and breakfast maker," Kelly said. "We tried to eat healthy because if I don't eat enough, I get a stomachache. So we had a healthy breakfast every morning. He made eggs and pancakes. We had lots of protein bars, too."

"She was a real trouper, getting up at 5 a.m. every morning," Jeff said. "I carried the backpack with snacks and drinks, and she carried the rifle."

But the first three days of the hunt were rainy and windy. The Holmins came home after the first weekend without seeing a moose.

They returned the following weekend, planning to hunt nine days through the MEA weekend, if necessary. Kelly was scheduled to take three days off from school. Again, from Saturday through Tuesday morning, they saw no moose.

It also snowed.

Kelly admits she was getting discouraged. It was now seven days into the hunt.

"He kept telling me not to give up. On some days, that worked better than others. If it was a brand new day, I might believe him more," Kelly said.

Still, they were having the time of their lives. "It's really cool to know someone who knows so much about animals," Kelly said of her father. "He taught me how to call moose, what they look like and where their trails and paths are. We were well prepared."

Late Tuesday afternoon, Kelly and Jeff returned to a high, rocky hill overlooking a clearing about 10 miles from their camper. When they peeked down in the small valley, a bull moose was raking his antlers against a pine tree. The problem was Kelly wasn't tall enough to rest her rifle on her two shooting sticks (for support and balance) and see over the tall brush.

So father and daughter moved quietly around the hill and Jeff directed her to put her rifle on the sticks again and look through the scope. Kelly said she could just see black dirt.

"That was the moose," Jeff said. "People don't realize they are coal black."

With one shot, Kelly felled the moose with a 75-yard shot.

"That's when dad started jumping up and down saying, 'You got him!' ''

"She started crying, she was so happy," Jeff said. When they climbed down the hillside, "she couldn't believe how big he was," Jeff added.

Jeff spent the rest of the evening field dressing the 1,100-pound moose, getting about 450 pounds of boneless meat. Was Kelly grossed out?

"Not really," she said. "He's a taxidermist, so he kind of cuts things up for a living. I've kind of seen it every day when his shop was next to the house. I'm kind of used to it, but I didn't like seeing the stomach."

Lou Cornicelli, big-game coordinator for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, confirmed Kelly is the youngest Minnesotan to successfully kill a moose in the modern era.

Kelly is savoring her adventure with her outdoors-expert dad — and her adventure on the Gunflint Trail, "my absolute favorite place in the world."

Jeff is building a new taxidermy studio, and Kelly's full-sized mounted moose will be the center attraction.

"It was a great experience," he said. "I told her she had to keep at it, and she did. It's a good lesson for life."

[Pat K]

Wow is she going to put on one hell
of a show and tell class this year!