Caleb Sumrall and his 6-year-old daughter, Clélie, are all smiles after she killed her first deer, a 3-point, 120-pound buck, in north Louisiana.

Caleb Sumrall, who won one of the biggest bass tournaments to jumpstart his pro bass fishing career in October 2017, knows what it’s like to be on Cloud 9.

During Thanksgiving week, a few weeks after his last bid to make a repeat appearance in the Bassmaster Classic came up short on Lake Pickwick near Florence, Alabama, the New Iberian was in the clouds again because his daughter, Clélie, shot and killed the first deer of her hunting career on a hunting trip with him and his grandfather, Kenneth Delcambre, in North Louisiana.

 “Ah, I was on Cloud 9. That’s every dad’s dream to watch their kid kill their first deer,” Sumrall, an all-around outdoorsman who loves to bowhunt for deer, said this past week while praising his and his wife, Jacie’s, oldest child, who will be 7 on Dec. 30.

Clélie, a student at Dodson Elementary School, downed the 3-point, 120-pound buck with one shot from an AR-style .223-caliber rifle at a distance of approximately 85 yards.

At first, it wasn’t apparent the deer had been hit at all, her father said. It began walking away after the shot rang out from the deer stand they were in, then laid down. After waiting nearly an hour, Sumrall and his daughter went to the last spot it was seen and it wasn’t there. To complicate tracking matters, the blood trail ran out quickly.

Fortunately, a friend of Sumrall’s had a deer dog and the deer was found. 

“She was so excited,” her father said.

So was her mother when she got the news via social media immediately after the trigger was pulled. But she wasn’t surprised.

“The day before leaving for Haynesville, she found a four-leaf clover. We explained to her that to find a four-leaf clover was good luck,” Jacie Sumrall said. “She immediately said, ‘That means I’ll shoot a deer.’ And she was correct.

“When she Facetimed me right after she shot, she was smiling from ear to ear. I knew it was pure happiness and she was proud of herself and so are we.”

Her husband had taken Clélie deer hunting a few years earlier, just to walk alongside him without a rifle. Before the trip, Sumrall and his grandfather took her to practice with the rifle.

“We all went practice and got her dialed in. She was shooting good. I felt good about where she was” with her marksmanship, he said.

Jacie said, “Two days before (the deer hunting trip) Caleb and her ‘Paw’ (Delcambre), brought her to the shooting range and she shot the gun like she’s been shooting before. Hit right in the bulls-eye. So I knew she’d do great when a deer walked out.”

Caleb Sumrall said they were in the deer stand about 30 minutes  when a deer ambled into view.

“I asked her if she wanted to shoot because it was so early and she did. I put her up on my lap. She squeezed off a shot,” he said.

The bullet she fired hit the deer just behind the front shoulder, he said. It wasn’t quite a heart shot but it was close, he said.

Clélie also enjoys fishing with her dad, he said, but those days were limited this past year as he competed on the Bassmaster Elite and Bassmaster Opens circuits, 16 tournaments in all. He was on the road with his black Toyota Tundra and Phoenix B.A.S.S. Nation’s Best bass boat much of the year.

“We didn’t get as much chance to fish this year. We’re going to fish a lot next year,” he said, noting he has crossed off the Bassmaster Central Opens in 2019.

He will fish nine Bassmaster Elite tournaments starting in February.