Mother, daughter kill 8-point bucks within seconds of each other

Michele and Alyssa Larrimore were in different stands

On Oct. 12, Michele Larrimore of Brittons Neck, S.C. and her 10-year-old daughter Alyssa each killed 8-point bucks within seconds of one another while hunting on their Williamsburg County farm. They were sitting about 200 yards away from each other, and the shots happened so close together that it took a while for them to figure our the other one had taken a shot.

Around 7 a.m., Michele was watching a nice buck crossing a soybean field in front of her stand. As she was setting her binoculars down to raise her rifle, she dropped the binoculars. They banged against the stand. This startled the buck, which ran off. About 20 minutes later, an 8-point buck came out from the same area the other buck had.

She watched the buck through her rifle scope, and when the deer offered her a shot, she pulled the trigger on her .30-30. It clicked.

“I had forgotten to eject the bullet from where I had shot a few weeks before! So then I had to quietly eject that one, and get another one in the chamber. I finally was able to get a bullet loaded and get the gun back on him without him running off,” she said.

But then something else startled this deer.

“Some people started shooting birds off to the right side of me. That caused him to pick up his pace a little bit. He didn’t run off, but he looked like he would bolt at any time,” she said.

They both hear a noise

She zoned in on the deer through her scope, and was about to make a noise to try and get the deer to stop. But then she heard something. She didn’t fully understand what the noise was, but the deer heard it too, and stopped in its tracks. She pulled the trigger, and this time her rifle fired. She hit the deer, which was about 175 yards away. She got a text from her husband Michael almost immediately, asking her if it was their daughter that shot.

“I told him no, that it was me, and that I’d shot a nice buck that ran off into the woods. He asked me if I shot two times, and I told him no, that I had heard a noise just before I shot. But it didn’t register with me at the time that it was another shot I’d heard,” she said.

The two texted back and forth, trying to determine where the other shot had come from. Their daughter did not have a cell phone with service, so they couldn’t text her. But after a few minutes, her husband became convinced that Alyssa had taken a shot just a second before Michele did. He left his stand at 7:55 to check on the youth hunter. Michele got out of her stand then too, and began looking for her deer.

As her parents have always instructed her to do, Alyssa was still sitting in the deer stand when her dad arrived. He saw a huge smile on her face, then he noticed the white belly of a deer lying about 50 yards away.

“He thought it was a doe at first, but as he walked closer, he realized it was a buck,” said Michele.

Family celebrates a memorable hunt together

Meahwhile, Michele found her deer about 30 feet into the woods. She called her dad, who was also hunting nearby, and they pulled her buck out of the woods. Just then, her husband and daughter drove up, and they all shared in the celebration of a great hunt. This was Alyssa’s first deer, and it’s the first year that she has hunted from a stand alone.

Alyssa told them about her shot. She was playing a game on her mom’s old cell phone when she happened to look up. A buck was standing about 50 yards away. She placed the phone down, put her ear muffs on, and eased her rifle up. She took the shot, and the deer fell on the spot.

“We aren’t sure who was more excited, us or Alyssa! This has always been something my family has passed on through the generations, and I couldn’t be more proud of Alyssa. And now to be able to share this story with my daughter is something that no one can ever take from us. It will be a special memory forever,” said Michele.

Click here to read about two siblings who killed bucks moments apart on South Carolina’s youth day.