Despite some jitters on her first two days, Sydney Rooney of the Foothill Road area became one of the first new hunters to take advantage of a 2015 law allowing “apprentice hunters” aged 10 or older to participate in one of Montana’s oldest traditions.

Rooney, 11, had gone out for the two-day youth hunt Oct. 15 and 16, hoping to bring home some venison before opening weekend. But after waking up at 5 a.m. to head into a forest that she said was thick with whitetails those first two days, her nervousness got the best of her.

“I kept passing everything up on Thursday, and then on Friday I tried to shoot this little two-by-two, a little forkie, but I was like this,” she said, her arms shaking as she re-enacted her trepidation.

The jitters melted away by the following weekend, however, when she took her first shot at a young doe near Bay Horse Pass on a cool afternoon Oct. 25.

“I had to walk up a steep hill, [the deer] was about 25 yards away,” Sydney said, adding, “It wasn’t that hard of a shot. She was eating some moss on a tree, and I got a good angle on her.”

Most of her shooting experience had been confined to hitting gophers with her Cricket .22, but for serious game hunting, she decided to opt for a .30-30. And after three weeks of getting used to firing the big gun, it worked like a charm.

“I shot a big game animal, not just a little gopher!” she boasted, adding that her dad broke one of his knives while he was gutting it. “She was a tough doe.”

For her mother, Richelle, there was no masking her pride for her young hunter.

“Some boys, they’ll get so excited and just start firing,” she said. “Whereas her, she just shot once, and then her dad said, ‘You got her!’”

No small part of the experience is the tradition, getting to drive around the forest with her dad, Cam, in his pickup truck while he reminisced about his first deer.

“He didn’t even know that he shot one,” Sydney said in recounting her father’s story. “There was this big group of muley does, and this person ran up and said, ‘Hold your fire! You got one!’”

On the way back home Oct. 25,, Sydney and her father stopped at a check station where fish and game volunteers gave her a certificate to commemorate the occasion.

“They make it a huge deal,” Richelle Rooney said. “They were excited, they had five or six people there, shaking her hand and congratulating her.”

The next day at school, Sydney said she was the only student in her class with bragging rights after opening weekend.

The new “apprentice hunter” law passed the Montana Legislature earlier this year. While only children 12 or older could hunt previously, the new rule allows youths as young as 10 to hunt without attending Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks’ Hunters Education classes, provided they have a qualified mentor accompanying them and take the class after two years.

Excited but humble, Sydney said she probably will try to step up her game a little bit next year.

“A buck,” she said, after giving the question some thought. “Just a little baby, though, like maybe a three-by-three.”

Reporter Samuel Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.