Syracuse.com - Fabius girl, 14, has 'great luck' bass fishing and deer hunting, says dad

[HuntingNY-News]

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She caught an impressive largemouth bass with an ice fishing pole, and then followed that up with getting a doe on the last day of the Youth Hunt weekend.

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<p><strong>Tom Murfitt, of Fabius, who described himself as a "proud father," sent me these pictures of his daughter Madelin and included the following story about the young lady's recent bass fishing and deer hunting exploits::</strong></p>

<p>Murfitt wrote: "Attached are two pictures of my 14 year old daughter, Madelin Murfitt.</p>

<p>In the first picture she and her girlfriend, Elizabeth George, 14, came to me and asked if they could go fishing at a pond not far from our house. </p>

<p>":hey asked for a couple of rods and unfortunately I could only provide them with an ice fishing rod and a normal rod. I outfitted both poles with Mepps spinners and the girls were off.</p>

<p>"They returned at dusk to my amazement with a, 18" inch 3lb 4oz. large mouth bass. Maddy informed me that she caught the whopper on the ice fishing rod and it gave her one heck of a fight. Elizabeth caught the two smaller ones and they kept on fishing trying to get Elizabeth bigger one, however it didn't work out. The fish was caught a couple of weeks ago in late September.</p>

<p>"Then on October 14, 2013, we had just arrived home from the Adirondacks at about 3 p.m. We had previously talked about how we missed the youth hunt on our ride home from the trip.</p>

<p>"Once home Maddy said that she really wanted to go out deer hunting. We discussed the practicality of trying to pull it off; driving to Dick's to get the license, returning home, gathering our hunting gear and getting out in the woods.</p>

<p>" We ultimately decide to give it a shot. We arrived home with her first deer license in hand and at about 5 pm we headed into the woods. My 13 year old son, Thomas and my brother Todd joined us with their bows.</p>

<p>"Once in the woods we went our separate ways and Maddy and I sat on the edge of a field and my brother and son took to the hardwoods. We tucked ourselves into hedge row at 5:30 pm.</p>

<p>"A half-hour later, I glassed the fields and located a deer off in the distance. Maddy and I made are way over to the direction of where the deer was and when we closed the distance down to 200 yards, we belied crawled to an opening between two hedge rows.</p>

<p>" raised up to my knees and glassed the field where I last saw the deer to my surprise I not only saw one deer, but now there were 8-10 of them grazing in the field, bucks and does! Maddy inched up to me and I pointed out the deer.</p>

<div id="asset-13630560" class="entry_widget_large entry_widget_right"><span class="adv-photo-large"><img src="/static/common/img/blank.gif" class="lazy" data-original="http://media.syracuse.com/news/photo/13630560-large.jpg" class="adv-photo" alt="2013-10-20-youthhunt13.jpg" /><span class="photo-data"><span class="caption">Madelin with her doe.</span><span class="byline"></span></span></span> </div>

<p>"With the Thompson Center .50 cal muzzeloader in hand she got into a prone position. We were both experiencing difficulties with our optics fogging up but she finally told me that she had one in her sights, in was about 150 yards out.</p>

<p>"She would soon touch one off and after the smoke of the black powder dissipated we saw nothing but whitetail flags disappearing into the woods. With no deer down in the field, we checked the wood line with the assistance of my son and brother.</p>

<p>"Soon my son located a small amount of blood, just inside the wood line and we set off on the blood trail. After a long 3 hours we located the downed doe and my daughter was thrilled.</p>

View the full article on The Syracuse Outdoors Blog