A 10-year-old girl from Texas recently killed a 13-foot-long, 800-pound alligator with her first shot from a crossbow during a hunting sojourn on the Guadalupe River.
According to the Victoria Advocate, Ella Hawk shot the reptile from approximately 15 yards away, hitting it right above its eyes and killing it.
"I wasn’t nervous," Ella said. "The first shot paralyzed and killed him." Her father, Tony, was more jittered.
"I was more nervous than her before the shot. She has nerves of steel before the shot. She’s just gifted like that, I guess," he said.
The young Texan has been hunting for some time. Last year, Hawk won the Texas-based Trophy Game Records of the World’s "Huntress of the Year" award. Officially measured at 13 feet, the alligator ranks in first place in the database of Trophy Game Records of the World.
Though Ella slayed the reptile on her first crossbow shot, she took two extra shots to ensure the kill.
"She Robin Hood-ed it," Ryan Longer, Ella’s hunting guide, said.
Longer also instructed Ella to shoot the alligator with a .243 pistol to make sure it was dead. The young hunter aimed and fired perfectly at her first crossbow arrow.
"I was happy," the 10-year-old said of the feat. "I was so excited."