Gardnerville great-grandmother bags her buck

Most hunters would agree that a 250-yard kill shot on a large, four-point buck in the high desert country of Elko County is a pretty good take, even better when the hunter turns out to be 75-year-old great-grandmother Doris Bauman.

"I took the picture of the deer to my church, because I wanted everyone to know why I wasn't at the meeting that day," Bauman said at The Record-Courier office on Tuesday. "My boys (she has three) made me get it mounted."

Thus, a new pair of antlers will soon be hanging at the widow's Wildrose residence in Gardnerville, and she's already been sharing venison with neighbors.

"My husband passed away two years ago, and my sons have been bothering me to go hunting," she said.

On Oct. 8, Bauman and her 54-year-old son Dale left Winnemuca around 4 a.m. They drove north into the wild country around the ghost town of Midas, seeing several antelope and, to their surprise, some bull elk in a brushy draw. Around 7 a.m., Bauman said, they saw four mule deer emerge in pointy profile on a hill before them. Leaving their pickup truck behind, Bauman, the only one with a tag, drew her 6-mm bolt-action rifle and set the cross hairs of her scope on a choice buck.

"I shot him right through the shoulders," she said. "He took a nose dive over the hill."

The 250-yard shot dropped the nearly 200-pound animal. Bauman later helped her son field dress the carcass.

"We were able to back up the pickup and load it in, as if it were made for an old lady," Bauman said. "He skinned it, and I butchered the whole thing myself. The meat is in the freezer, and it's delicious."

Bauman has lived in the Valley since 1966. She started hunting when she was 18 years old. She said she used to hate guns, but eventually took up the sport with the insistence of her husband and three boys.

"It had been a long time," she said. "I found my old hunting license in my purse, and it was more than 10 years old."

Although she landed her trophy this year (26-by-18 inches), Bauman has no intention of quitting the hunt.

"I'll put in for a tag next year, too," she said. "I'll be hunting as long as I can."