Kaylee Blodgett, 15, of Skowhegan with the buck she shot Saturday during Youth Hunting Day. Submitted photo
Kaylee Blodgett is no novice when it comes to hunting.
At 15, the Skowhegan teen has been hunting deer since she was 10 and has shot five during that time.
Saturday, Youth Hunting Day, was no different.
Blodgett shot a 125-pound spike horn, which is a male deer with two horns, with one point on each, she explained.
She and her father, Ben Blodgett, and her grandfather, Steve Blanchet, left her Notch Road home early Saturday, arriving at the family hunting shack on their 30-acre property. Kaylee hunts with a 7 millimeter .08 rifle, she said.
“I got there about 10 after 6 or so,” she said. “At 7:30, I was sitting in the shack and two doe came out and right behind the two doe, the spike horn came out. I just set my gun up on the window sill and shot it.”
They took the deer to the Skowhegan Fire Station to be tagged and it will be butchered by Dave Kinney on Dudley Corner Road, according to Kaylee.
“We get it cut up in steaks and stuff and freeze it,” she said.
A 10th grader at Skowhegan Area High School where she enjoys studying English and science, Kaylee said that even though she has a hunting license she cannot take a hunting safety course until she turns 16. She has spent her life learning about hunting from her father and grandfather — her mother, Amy, doesn’t hunt, she said — and even shot a moose in the Allagash.
An only child, Keylee said she loves going out into the fields and woods to hunt.
“It’s fun,” she said, simply.
At the Skowhegan Fire Department just before 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Firefighter Matt Quinn said four deer had been tagged since 7 a.m. for Youth Hunting Day. Tagging stops at 9 p.m., he said.
“We do that seven days a week,” Quinn said.
The fire department, which serves as a tagging station for bear, deer and turkey, is handling tagging a bit differently this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to Quinn.
In a normal year, hunters bring their deer to the station and hand their licenses to a firefighter who enters them into a computer and then offers to weigh the deer, he said.
“This year we put the scales on hold,” Quinn said. “This year, they come to the front door and call on their cell phone and we’ll do everything on the computer. They put the money in the drop box and we go out and tag the deer. We wear masks and gloves. It reduces our exposure.”
The cost to tag a deer is $5, he said.
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