8-Year-Old Girl Breaks Michigan State Record
On December 14th, 2019, Braeleigh Miller from Sunfield Township just became the youngest person on record to successfully harvest an elk in the state of Michigan at the young age of just 8 years old.
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She was with her dad hunting in a group of 20 top-notch hunting experts who guided and ran the operation. The team located a heard of elk during the night and followed them so they could legally shoot them when it got daylight.
“They were all still in the field when it got daylight, and we waited for legal shooting hours, and we snuck across the field and they were in a perfect position in the field, I mean it couldn’t have unfolded any better,” Braeleigh’s dad Gunnar Miller said to Fox 17 Online.
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Braleeigh wasn’t using a kid’s gun either, she was using a fully loaded .308-caliber rifle that was secured and held up by a sturdy tripod. Her father said on Facebook that it took a while to get her comfortable with the rifle and familiar with the landscape, but when it came time to pull the trigger, she didn’t hesitate.
She dropped the elk from 200 yards away, which was her personal best record for the longest distance she’s ever shot something. The video posted to Facebook below shows her dad getting a bit emotional and giving his little girl a big hug after she made the kill.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10215777150446161&set=pcb.10215777154246256&type=3&theater
Gunnar says that youth hunting in Michigan is a dying sport and he wanted to get his daughter into hunting at a young age after he heard a study about youth hunters. The study said that the younger a person starts hunting the more likely they will continue to do it in their later years. Braeleigh is clearly just getting started and overall, she’s just glad she beat the Michigan state record.
“It’s cool for me because I’ve never set a record before, my Dad hasn’t set a record before, and my grandpa hasn’t set a record before, so I’m like to them, ‘Ha-ha,'” Braeleigh Miller told Fox 17 Online.