TSIIGEHTCHIC/ARCTIC RED RIVER
With her father's steadying hand on the front of the gun, 10-year-old Dayle Cole killed her first caribou with only her second bullet.

Over the weekend of Oct. 18, 10-year-old Dayle Cole took down a caribou on her first hunting trip, and even went back for a second. - photo courtesy of Dayle Cole

A little while later, she took aim for a second kill, this time going it alone, marking a successful first caribou hunt for the youth on Oct. 18.

"She missed her first shot and then said she'll try again so I let her load the gun. Her second shot, she dropped the caribou. I was just laughing and happy," recalls Cole's father Archie (Junior) Inglangasuk.

"I gave her a high five and then I went and got maybe four or five caribou and she asked to try again, so I gave her the rifle."

This time, Cole wanted to handle the gun herself - resting the barrel on the handlebars of the Ski-doo to support the weight.

"I was holding the front so it wouldn't kick her too much, and she said, 'That's okay dad, I got it," Inglangasuk said.

"She aimed at the caribou and dropped her. She got two in three shots."

Cole recalls the excitement of seeing her dad's face after she made the shot.

"It was really fun," she says.

Cole has been asking to join a hunting trip for a while now, he said, but he was hesitant to bring her out on the spring hunt when there is water and slush on the ground. That being said, he had an inkling she might be a natural.

"I showed her how to aim and got her a little BB gun for Christmas," Inglangasuk says.

"Last spring we got a bunch of lemmings coming in off the ice - I sent her out and said, 'Get some lemmings.' She came back with 16. So, she's a pretty good shot. I'm thinking next year I'll have to get her a bigger rifle."

Along with Cole's godbrother and his friend, the group took in a good number of caribou over the Oct. 18 weekend, which Inglangasuk says was given out to family and friends in town, in Inuvik and Hay River where his mother lives.

"Everybody else I talked to in the family was so happy. Even people around town are giving congrats to baby Dayle and telling her it's a good job and stuff," he said. "We're going to throw her a big supper coming up. When I was younger you get your first moose or big kill, they throw a feast. So, we're going to make a big feast and have family over."

Cole said her classmates had trouble believing she shot her first caribou, but were happy for her when they saw the photos.

"I told my teacher and he was like, 'Holy,'" Cole says.

"He said how young I was to shoot a a caribou. He said he didn't even shoot a caribou when he was that young."

The trip taught Cole a lot, she says. Her father told her to aim for the neck and shoot when the caribou is still - though she got her second one after it started running away.

"When we were dragging the caribou back, we had to tie it around the head and when we kill it, my dad will cut it on the neck so that when we eat the head it wont taste weird."

Luckily, taste wasn't a problem.

"We cut some up the other day and we had Kraft dinner and ground up the caribou and had it with the Kraft dinner," she says. "It tasted really good."

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