BETHEL — Emma McPherson, 13, planned to mount her moose skull on her bedroom wall, where an oversized picture of Donald Trump appears to offer a “thumbs up” of her accomplishment.  Thunder, her cat watched from the end of the bed as she and her dad positioned the European mount skull and antlers from the 720-pound moose she’d bagged.  Snap shots of family and friends cover a different wall, and a cowgirl hat hangs on the bed post.

The sun was setting on Tuesday, October 11 around 5:50 p.m. when McPherson walking beside Shannon Sumner, her sub-permittee, pretended she saw two moose that he’d pointed out. “I didn’t see them at first,” she admitted. When she did, she decided she didn’t have a shot on the larger one, so went for the smaller one.

She heard Sumner say, “you shot it! She shot it all on her own!”, he said to her mother who was filming. “I was in shock … then I got the scope to the eye twice, my ears were ringing, I was dizzy. Then I had to shoot again. The first shot was behind the leg, and it dropped it and then in the neck. It just wouldn’t die. It was sad.” Her sub-permittee shot the kill-shot.

She had been hunting for two days in Aziscohos (north of Andover) with her parents, Courtney and Mark, her brother, Landon, 11; her uncle, another family friend and Sumner. The hunters stayed at the Black Brook Cove Campground in nearby Lincoln Plantation.

She had never shot anything except a target when she won the lottery for a permit at her great grandfather’s 90th birthday party on June 14. “Both sides of the family are big hunters,” said her father, Mark. Her mother, Courtney, who has completed her safety license training, had encouraged Emma to go for it. It was her first try. “I didn’t really care for hunting. The odds of me getting one are very slim, I thought. If I get one, it would be cool. Sure, why not put me in,” she told her mother.

She killed the moose on the second and final rut of the season. “The second rut is harder, they’re wearier.” Said Mark McPherson, “And more cautious”, added Emma. Her father explained how the electronic call-ins, downloaded audio that mimics a cow in heat or a bull that wants to fight, lure the moose to the set-up area. Mark McPherson also does calls by mouth, and he rakes the trees.  “I like to do both calls. But they always laugh at me,” he said gesturing toward Emma who kept her head down, and was trying not to smile.

In the kitchen freezer, and another one stuffed to the gills in the garage, are the 450 pounds of moose meat that Emma and her family will eat. She ‘sometimes’ like moose meat but always likes it when cooked in chili, Shepherd’s Pie and chopped suey.

Mark continues, “I’ve been putting in for 25 years and I just got drawn four years ago. She’ll have to wait another three years before she can put in again. There are people out there in their 60’s and 70’s who have never gotten drawn. It’s all a lottery.” He agrees that people will be happy for her, just the same.

As she left the woods that day, Emma had pulled her hat down to cover the big egg on her forehead after being scoped twice. Despite, the injury, she wears a smile in the photos, as she poses with her first moose kill.