PETROLIA, Pa. (EYT/D9) — Lyrik Reed saw the eight-point buck wander into a clearing.
He looked familiar. A closer examination and Reed was certain.
It was the same buck she had missed with her crossbow earlier in the season.
“I just knew because of the way his horns were,” Reed said. “It was the exact same one.”
Reed, a 15-year-old freshman at Karns City High School, wasn’t about to miss again.
She took a deep breath, aimed and patiently waited for her shot. When she was certain she could bag her old nemesis, she fired.
He was hers.
“I definitely got my redemption on him,” Reed said, chuckling. “The first time I saw him, my arrow hit a twig and I missed him. This time, I waited and he stepped out into a clear space and I took my shot.”
This was the sixth deer Reed has harvested in her hunting career, which began at the age of 7. At first, Reed wasn’t necessarily the biggest fan of rising early in the morning, stalking out into the woods on her family’s sprawling property and sitting in a tree stand in the freezing cold.
Then she got her first deer.
“It was the best feeling in the world,” Reed said. “It was amazing. And to have my dad there with me was a pretty special moment.”
From then on, Reed was hooked on hunting.
Bow season is her favorite because she enjoys the challenge.
“Guns aren’t really my thing,” Reed said.
Most of the deer Reed has taken have been mounted and hang in the family’s garage. Every time she enters the garage, she admires her work.
She’s harvested most of them, too, with a crossbow.
That’s her favorite part of hunting — taking the shot and hitting the mark.
“I like to kill,” Reed said, chuckling when she realized how creepy that sounded. “I like going out with my dad (Travis Reed), too, and spending time with him. I enjoy that a lot.”
While she likes taking the shot while hunting, when Reed is playing soccer for Karns City, she prefers to set her teammates up to take their shots.
Reed has made a big impact as a freshman outside midfielder for the Gremlins, who just beat Clearfield last week to win the District 9 Class 2A title and will host WPIAL runner-up North Catholic Tuesday night at Diehl Stadium.
She’s piled up a slew of assists this season — a pretty regular gig given the goal-scoring power of juniors McKenna Martin and Emma Dailey on the attack.
“My thing is that assists are sometimes better than goals,” Reed said. “To be able to hand out assists to our top goal scorers feels pretty good.”
Reed began playing soccer when she was 5. Soccer has always been her thing, she said.
Reed said she can draw from her hunting experience to help her on the soccer pitch and vice versa.
“There’s a lot of patience behind both,” Reed said. “You have to be patient when you take your shot at a deer and sometimes you have to be patient when you take a shot on goal. There’s a lot of connections between hunting and soccer.”
Reed said learning to keep that kind of composure was difficult at first in both endeavors.
“It was very hard to learn that,” Reed said. “I always just wanted to take shot, but sometimes, like with a bow, you really can’t just take your shot. You have to wait until they get closer.”
When she’s in a tree stand, there’s also the phenomenon of “Buck Fever” she has to overcome. Buck Fever is the term given to the adrenalin rush that cascades through a hunter when he or she takes aim and is about to fire.
Reed has been able to conquer that as well.
“You really have to calm yourself down,” Reed said. “I tend to shake a little bit when a buck walks out, but I just calm myself.”
Reed had trouble calming herself shortly after freshman Sarah Dodd buried a penalty kick late in overtime to give Karns City the 3-2 win and a district title last week.
Like the rest of her teammates, she mobbed Dodd and celebrated.
Reed wasn’t on the team that lost to Clearfield last season, but she knew how much beating the Bison meant to those Gremlins who were.
“It was absolutely amazing for them to get their redemption and get the D9 back,” Reed said. “Me being able to be a part of that was pretty great.”
