SARA DAIVE BAGS A RAM WITH 1 SHOT

Most of Sara Davie's resume would seem to be in keeping with an average up-and-coming sophomore girl.

A member of the Silver Arrow yearbook staff and Future Business Leaders of America at Jackson High School, Davie has picked out physical therapy as a career goal. While commendable, this is nothing truly out of the ordinary, either.

Only when the topic of hobbies comes up does Davie emerge as truly out of the ordinary.

The 16-year-old is an avid hunter, receiving her first gun at the age of 5.

While she has yet to bag a deer in four hunting seasons, she has bagged something else with antlers (or horns). On Oct. 6, while attending a hunt at Show-Me Safaris near licking, Davie killed a 120-pound Corsica ram. Using a 243 bolt action rifle, she found herself staring face-to-face with the ram from about 60 yards away."It was looking right at me," Davie recalled. "I shot it through the lung. It only took me one shot and it was dead."The antlers will be mounted, the hide tanned and the rest made into sausage and enjoyed by the Davie family.

The safari came about after she was nominated by Tim Henderschott (a co-worker of her father) and selected by the Bootheel Boss Gobblers chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation. The federation is an organization promoting growth and preservation of wild turkeys. The safari included skeet shooting, black power guns, turkey-calling and a big screen shooting-similated experience."I knew other kids who had been before, but I didn't know where it was or what it was like," Davie said. "It was a really neat experience. I really enjoyed the skeet shoot. I like shooting a shotgun. There were only three girls (of 16 youths at the safari) and I was the only girl who could hit the targets non-stop."She also took fourth place in the turkey-calling contest, event hough she had never used a turkey-call before.

Davie has grown up around hunting. Her father, Randy Davie and her brother Ryan, 19, have been avid hunters as long as Sara can remember. Her first gun came as a Christmas present at age 5."My dad showed my brother and me how to sue guns," she said. "He took me to a hunter safety class and started taking me hunting."A special highlight comes when she does run into a rare fellow female hunter."There are a lot of guys, but not many girls that hunt," she said. "Whey you find one it's really neat because you have a lot of the same interests."A petite brunet with a contagious smile, she is not what many male hunters expect to run into in the deer woods."Some guys will say 'I can't believe a girl can hunt!' or 'I can't believe you like the blood and guts!'" said Davie, who is not at all squeamish about gutting a kill. "I think you should do whatever you want to do. It's a lot of fun and I think it's great."