Fifteen-year-old Helen Rice, a Walpole resident and Lincoln Academy sophomore, registered a big game grand slam, completing the feat on Wednesday, Dec. 3 with the tagging of an eight-point buck.
A big game grand slam — tagging a moose, bear, turkey and white-tailed deer in the same calendar year — is a lifelong goal for many seasoned hunters but is achieved by only a small percentage of them.
Helen and her father Adam Rice were both drawn for moose lottery permits in June. Adam got a permit for a bull moose and Helen received a cow permit for Zone 4 in the last week of moose hunting season in October.
“I knew if I put enough effort in, I could achieve it, but it was not fully my goal until I got my bear in September,” Helen said.
She got her black bear the second day of her hunt in Ebeemee Township in Piscataquis County, where her father, a Maine Guide, has a bear-hunting guide operation. She used her grandfather’s 7mm-08 on the 45-yard shot while she was sitting in a tree stand over bait when the bear came into sight near dusk.
“It worked out pretty nicely,” Helen said. “He came into the shooting lane, I fired, and down he went. It honestly just went so smoothly. Went as perfect as it could be.”
Next up on her quest was a turkey, which she shot with a 20 gauge on Oct. 13 in Walpole on the first day of the fall season.
“The fall turkey season is kind of a challenge, as they do not come in on a call. You have to spot them, stalk them and creep up on them. You hope they don’t spot you first,” she said.
The turkeys “popped out in front of us,” Helen said, making for an easy target from about 22 yards. The tom, her second ever, weighed 17-18 pounds and had an 8 1/2-inch beard.
With the bear and turkey checked off her list, the Rices headed north to Zone 4 and the Chamberlain Lake area in search of a cow moose in the final week of the season. They drove around on dirt roads scouting and spotted one about 100 yards off the road in a clearing on Oct. 28, the second day of their hunt.
Helen once again went with her grandfather’s 7mm-08 for her first-ever moose.
“She never heard us or saw us,” Helen said of laying the 585-pound cow down on an 80-yard shot at 7:45 a.m.
State biologists harvested the moose’s ovaries and examined it for winter ticks to study the overall health of the moose and the herd. The moose had worn marks on its hide from rubbing up against trees to sooth the itch from ticks.
Helen’s quest for a bear, turkey, and moose went smoothly, but bagging the illusive white-tailed deer proved a challenge. She got off a shot at a buck during the regular firearm season, but missed. Upon examining the gun, Adam discovered the scope needed to be adjusted, as it apparently got jostled out of alignment on the bumping truck ride home after their moose hunt.
Over four long weeks, she sat in tree stands for parts of 20 days and spent hours walking through the woods searching for a buck. After coming up empty during the firearm season, her last chance at the big game grand slam came in the muzzleloader season.
She had shot a muzzleloader before in target practice but had never shot anything with it. She was a little worried about not having a scope, but she trudged on in hopes of completing her quest.
On Tuesday, Dec. 2, when there was no school due to freezing rain and snow, Helen sat out in the inclement weather most of the day. With a week to go in the muzzleloader season, she was feeling discouraged.
“It just felt like we were putting all this time in and I started feeling it was not going to happen. It was the hardest thing. I still knew it was a big thing even without the grand slam,” she said.
“She sat out in freezing rain the other day and was getting discouraged. You have to spend thousands of hours for only a handful of minutes. It is all about putting in the time and having patience, and hers paid off this season,” Adam said.
With a fresh coat of snow on the ground, the Rices went out searching for tracks early in the morning before school. After school, Adam told his daughter they were going to sit somewhere else that night, Helen said.
They set up in a brush blind on the ground and waited. They did not have to wait long.
“We were there about eight minutes. We had just sat down and I kind of leaned over and saw something in the brush,” Helen said. “I nudged Dad and whispered ‘There is a deer over there.’ We watched it for four or five minutes, and at one point I saw antlers scraping the ground. We watched him awhile and he came out in the shooting lane about 40 yards away and came straight at us.”
Helen took aim and fired and her single shot muzzleloader filled the woods with smoke.
“It was almost like a magic trick, when the smoke cleared he was gone. We did not see him run or fall,” she said.
While wondering where he went, they followed his tracks for about 35 yards and found him lying there. Helen said she was “completely overwhelmed” by the size of the deer’s rack.
“I knew it was probably the biggest deer I will ever shoot,” she said.
The eight-point buck weighed 168 pounds, had a 22 1/2-inch spread, and was the perfect ending of her big game grand slam.
“I am so proud of her accomplishment,” Adam said.
Helen, the ultimate outdoorswoman, also loves fishing and tying flies, her mother Susan Bartlett Rice said.
The deer head is off to the taxidermist. With his “big antlers and chocolate brown coat, he is going on the wall,” Helen said.
