BANGOR DAILY NEWS - SATURDAY/SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13-14, 2004
 

Mclntyre Made Boast Come True

Come November, many hunters take time off from work and spend every possible hour in the woods hoping to bag a deer. Some hunt for a week. Some hunt for two. Others take the entire month off.  Of course, there are plenty of otherwise avid hunters

who don't have that option.
 
For those hunters who don't get to spend as much time in the woods as they'd like, every minute, every hour, every day takes on added importance - Stephanie Mclntyre is one of those people.
 
Mclntyre, a personable 19-year-old sophomore at Husson College, is pretty busy attending classes and studying.  Add basketball practices and games — the 6-foot-l Mclntyre is a center for the Eagles — and you've got a schedule that's pretty packed at this time of year.  Mclntyre says she figured out that she had only a few available days to hunt this year. Saturdays were more or less free (until next weekend, when she and her teammates begin traveling to games on weekends).  Thanksgiving week would be an option.  And opening day was a given.
 
According to the Mclntyre family Web site, Stephanie made a bold prediction when she headed back to Hope on Oct. 30.  A photo caption reads: "The story goes — Steph says I’m gonna come home from college for the day, shoot a buck and go back to school on Sunday' And so she did!"
 
Mclntyre appears on  the Web site sporting a broad grin, and posing next to a six-pointer that weighed 127pounds, field-dressed.  "I was out for an hour and 45 minutes," she said with a chuckle.
 
Her father, Scott Mclntyre, mother, Susan, and brother, 21-year-old Zac, are all avid hunters.  Scott Mclntyre pointed out in an e-mail that over the past six years, his daughter has bagged five deer on five shots.
 
Stephanie Mclntyre credits her success to the fact that when it comes to hunting, she's determined to succeed.  "Maybe it's because I'm female and I want to prove people wrong," she said. "It's just something that I like to do that's different. None of my other girlfriends do it. But my family is really big on it. When we go out, everyone goes out. We all go to different spots, but then we come back together and talk about it."
 
Of course, having hunting access to a nearly perfect piece of deer habitat doesn't hurt, either.  Stephanie shot this year's buck in the same place she shot all of her other deer.  "I like my spot. I have it set up. It's a lucky spot," she said. "It faces a field head-on, with a 'killing field' to the left, cut out perfectly with an apple tree, and then  a huge blueberry field to the right."
 
Depending on the direction of the wind, she sits on one end or the other of the field. And many times, she ends up seeing deer.  Back in 2002, she sat in her "lucky spot" and bagged a 185-pound buck with a monstrous 11-point rack that scored 140 7/8 according to Maine Antler and Skull Trophy Club scorers.
 
Mclntyre says that most of her friends don't hunt. Her roommate, for example, doesn't even want to see pictures of deer Mclntyre has shot, nor hear stories about the hunts.  Basketball teammates Michelle Murray and Holly Gracie, however, understand her passion a bit better.  Both are hunters.  "They couldn't believe it that I tagged out on my first day," Mclntyre said.
 
Mclntyre said the time she does get to spend hunting is special to her.  "[I love] being in the out doors," she said. "When I'm with my friends, they're all girls, so it's like, I love shopping, but at the same time I love hunting because it's different.  "I just feel like I'm self-reliant when I do it, I guess. And it gives me something to talk about, because [friends] say, 'Wow, you're a hunter and you're female? Why did you start that?'"  The answer, she said, is simple.  "It's a tradition in my family," she said. "It's something we do together."  And it's something they do successfully.  At least one year, Stephanie pointed out, all four Mclntyres ended up getting their deer.  That, of course, led to a lot of venison steaks ... and Stephanie Mclntyre can deal with that.  "I love it," she said. "My dad's in charge of cooking all the deer meat, and my mom does all the other stuff."