By Gita Smith

There's no two ways about it. Taylor Parria is a diehard hunter. She'd rather go hunting than do almost anything else. Taylor, who lives in Marrero, La., first went to deer camp with her dad when she was a baby. Now 12, she has taken three deer, the first one (a doe) when she was eight. Two years later came her first buck. Last December, her father took her to the Ford Ranch in Texas where she shot a great 8-pointer. Her gun of choice, right now, is a Savage Arms rifle in 7 mm.

"I mostly go to hunting camp in Hazelhurst, Miss., where we have 3,700 acres and a campsite," Taylor says. "There's three ways to get into the woods from the camp. There are a high percentage of oaks and some pines there. We love to go because so many of our friends are there, and it's a lot of fun."

The family and their hunting pals gave names to some of the places around their hunting lease. That way, hunters know which stands each person is in. "I like to hunt in the stands at two places, David's Swamp and Dallas. I also like the power line stands because you can see a long way," says Taylor.

Her parents, Jeremy and Melissa LeBlanc, have been going to deer camp for many years, and there are more than 30 kids whose parents are members. Every year, they all gather there for a big Thanksgiving party. "We all hunt. I have a brother and sister, and all the kids who go there hunt," says Taylor.

Although she hunts from stands above the ground at camp, it was from a ground blind in Texas that Taylor shot her 8-pointer. "There was a feeder not far away, and we saw about 60 deer at a time."

YBO asked Taylor for some hunting advice for other kids. Here's what she had to say:
"Don't get buck fever! I tend to have that. Have confidence in yourself, stay calm. Breathe; just breathe so you don't shake. When I get buck fever, I feel like I am in an earthquake."

Although Taylor is gaining experience as a hunter with every year, she does have other skills. She is a Level 7 gymnast (there are 10 levels), and she has Olympic dreams. She also is a straight A student at her middle school.

Taylor wrote about her love for the sport, and this is what she had to say:

"It is something that I do because I am so deeply in love with it. It is not just a passion, but an obsession. It makes me shake when I am in that stand, because being in that stand, looking at those deer's eyes, makes me tingle underneath my skin. I see the fear, the excitement, the anger, the adventure. I see all of these things in the deer's eyes. The fear of the sounds made; the excitement over the nervousness of the other animals; the anger of how hungry they are; the adventure of the journey through the woods.

"Things are more than they appear to be. In the deer world, we are their enemies. They are so scared of us, but what about us? Is it our face, our shoes, even our smell? We don't know what it is, but I do know one thing: The feeling of that trigger pulled and the sound of that bullet frightens them. I love hunting because I feel the same way the deer do. We are so different, but in a way so much alike."

-- Gita Smith