Great-grandmother, 80, bags first deer

Gladys Schaefer likes to get things done. The 80-year-old western Kentucky great-grandmother followed that mantra in her first outing as a deer hunter. She bagged a doe within 30 minutes in late November. "Don't stop doing things 'til you're in the grave!" Schaefer says.

She's a mother of four, grandmother of eight and great-grandmother of seven who loves boating, plays golf three or four times a week and is getting ready for a trip to Las Vegas.

"She's a totally amazing woman," said Mark Lynn, her son-in-law.

Her grandson-in-law, Christopher Connell and Lynn took Schaefer out for the Nov. 20 hunt. They picked her up the day before to take her out for some target practice.

She said she hadn't fired a gun since her teens, but she hadn't forgotten a thing. She did well with a rifle mounted on a tripod, and the trio retired to a trailer for the night.

The thermometer dropped to 24 degrees that evening, but Schaefer said she fared just fine. By 6 a.m. the next day, she was in a blind at the foot of a tree where Connell served as deer spotter and relayed information to her and Lynn over a walkie-talkie.

Within minutes, a doe came within 50 or 60 yards of the blind, and she fired a shot.

"Ka-powie! I let it go! I thought my heart would beat right out of my chest. I was so excited," she said.

Schaefer, a breast-cancer survivor who lost her husband of 54 years last August, praises her family for supporting her notions and "being so wonderful to me."

"She just wants to do whatever she's big enough to do," Connell said. "I love her to death. She's a great sport, fun and fun-loving."

Now Schaefer is happily distributing to friends the many pounds of sausage from the deer, and she's looking forward to another hunt in 2007.

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Information from: The Gleaner, http://www.thegleaner.com/