Young hunters: Petite huntress bags prowess one step at a time

Katie Helm has grown up with hunting on several levels beyond her 5-foot height.

“I was about 5 years old when I started going out with my dad,” said the senior in communications at Eastern Washington University. “He said I had to reach 95 pounds and able to hold a rifle steady before he’d let me hunt.”

She made the grade at age 15, cutting her hunting teeth on Western Washington blacktails near her home in Little Rock, Washington.

This month, at age 22, she double-lunged her first elk with a 235-yard kneeling shot from her .270 after seven seasons of growth as a huntress.

“I’d hunted with family for mule deer and antelope in Wyoming, but I didn’t get my first whitetail until I came to Spokane,” she said.

“I always wanted to feel the freedom of hunting solo. My dad insisted that if I hunted alone, it had it be on private land. That whitetail was a little two-by-two buck, but I did it completely on my own.

“It was exciting and liberating. It was late buck season and I had one last chance before going back to school. I found the deer and made the shot. I’ve always gutted my own deer. Right from the first day, Dad said he’d talk me through it, but I had to do it on my own.

“When I finished that hunt and dragged the deer to the road, I felt super accomplished and told myself, ‘Yeah, I can do this by myself.’”

This season Helm set her sights higher.

“Elk hunting is another animal,” she said.

She teamed with her husband, Cooper Helm, and brother, Brent Oliver, during any breaks from school and her job as they scoped out public and private timber lands in northeastern Washington.

They had been hunting separately one morning but came together again at the edge of a clearcut when they spotted the bull elk.

“It was cool to have my brother and husband with me as we made the stalk over a ridge,” she said. “My brother and I have been hunting together for a long time, but I was always the tag-along. I’d never shot an animal while he was there.”

When they spotted the elk again, Helm looked for a rest for her rifle but nothing was available. Her husband was pulling shooting sticks stabilizers out of his pack but the bull and the fleeting opportunity were starting to slip away.

“I knelt and felt steady and confident,” she said.

The bull fell to one shot from her Savage Arms Lady Hunter rifle.

“The stock is my size and it has the proper raise – easier to look down the sights since women have longer necks than men. The grip is skinnier for my smaller hands and it’s not so long and out of balance for off-hand shooting.”

Equipment wasn’t the only thing Helm had in order.

“We’ve been hunting that land for four years and working really hard to figure it out,” she said. “Last year, I was out there five days from morning to dark in very cold weather.

“Putting in that time and effort and finally taking an animal – an elk, no less – was very rewarding.”