That Abigail Maturin’s first deer in her first year of deer hunting was a buck still amazes the 18-year-old New Iberia woman who danced for 17 years with Paige’s Dance and Cheer Studio.

That Abigail shot it during an afternoon deer hunt Nov. 27 with her father, Chad Maturin, made it extra special, she said two days later, back at home where the New Iberia Senior High graduate (Class of 2021) works as a daycare teacher at Gingerbread House and attends South Louisiana Community College.

“She just started hunting with me this year,” her proud father said the day after she shot and killed a 150-pound, 8-point buck. He was still up at the 711 Hunting Club lease of 1,200 acres in Bienville Parish.

He’s been deer hunting with his son, Ayden, 13, since the teen was 4 or 5 years old. The young hunter shot a few does, he said, including one this year, but unlike his older sister, never a buck.

Abigail’s dancing days prevented her from going on deer hunts until this year, she said.

“I wanted to give it a try, shoot my first deer, so I went try it out,” she said, adding her dad took her to a shooting range to work on her marksmanship before the season started in Area 2, home of the 711 Hunting Club.

Her outing a few weeks earlier had decidedly different results than the one a week ago Saturday.

“She just started hunting with me this year. She shot a spike a couple weeks ago. She hit it but we never could find it,” her father said, noting dogs were used to track the deer.

“I was disappointed but like my dad told me, you always get a second chance. Don’t get down,” she said.

She was anxious to go again Nov. 27. And the deer hunting gods smiled on that hunt.

The father-and-daughter deer hunters settled into a box stand around 2:30 p.m. on the memorable Saturday. Approximately 2 ½ hours later, the buck she shot first showed itself, apparently following does.

She looked through the telescope and tracked one of the does.

“Actually, she was about to shoot a doe. All of a sudden a head (with antlers) popped out (of the nearby foliage). I couldn’t see it. She was looking through the ’scope. She waited until it got out and turned broadside. When it turned broadside, she shot,” her father said about the sequence of events, which he captured on video.

Abigail remembers the details well.

“Really, I was about to shoot a doe. It kept moving toward the feed pile. I was waiting, waiting. I said, ‘Oh, look, a buck.’ He said, ‘Are you going to shoot it?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I can.’ That’s when I got myself ready,” she said.

Abigail shouldered the Browning X-Bolt Composite Stalker .270 WSM Bolt Action Rifle, a top-tier deer rifle that is remarkably light (under 7 pounds), and scoped the buck.

Her father’s whispered instructions and encouragement are heard on the video from the moment they both saw several deer. As he talked softly, the video focused on the deer about 100 yards away in the opening.

She took those words to heart and also remembered one other tip.

“My aunt had told me one thing I had to do is hold my breath (before squeezing the trigger),” she said about Emily Landry of New Iberia, who hunted deer before starting a family. “That’s what I did. It worked.”

The loud crack of the single shot is heard on the video. The 150-pound buck was shown hauling it left to right out of the clearing into the woods.

“I hit him? Oh my God,” she said, happily, on the video a few minutes before the video ended.

Her father, a 45-year-old machinist at Tomahawk Downhole in New Iberia, said they waited approximately 30 minutes before getting out of the box stand to search for the deer.

“I didn’t know I killed it until we got there. I felt like I killed it but you never know. I hit it in the right spot. I was just nervous,” she said. “I was very excited to see my first deer, a very good deer, an 8-point.”

Her father said, “She thought it was 5 or 6 (points). She hit it in the shoulder. We couldn’t find blood originally. I knew she hit it. I was looking at the video,” he said, adding they had dogs track it until it was found approximately 100 yards away.

“She was excited. I was probably more excited than her,” he said.

Abigail, her right foot strapped in a walking boot after spraining her ankle on the hunt there two weeks earlier, was unable to help carry the deer out of the woods. She did as much as she could field dressing the deer.

But she did get the traditional swiping of her first deer’s blood on her cheeks and forehead.

“Oh my God. It was disgusting. I did it, though,” she said.