Modern Day Annie Oakley Stacking Venison In Bartow County

Batey Kay Hardy with a Bartow County 9-pointer, one of five deer she’s taken this season.

Her name is Batey Kay Hardy, but maybe she should be called Annie Oakley.

The 9-year-old 4th grader at Cartersville Elementary School is in her first full year of deer hunting. So far this season, she’s taken five deer with five shots. Included in her count is a 9-point that is larger than many men will ever take and a doe that she took with a 206-yard shot. She dropped the doe in its tracks.

“I took her once last year, and she was hesitant to squeeze the trigger,” her father Zack Hardy said. “I told her we’d just wait until next season. We went before the season and did some target shooting. I was confident then that she could hit what she was aiming at.”

She took her first deer, a doe, early in the season, and on Nov. 3, she took her first buck, an 8-point. Two more does followed. On Dec. 3, she took the 9-point. She took it with a 150-yard shot with a .243 she was using.

The big buck had 10-inch G2s and one G3 that was longer than 10 inches. It had a 16-inch inside spread.

“On the first doe she killed, later that afternoon a huge 8-point came out, and it was walking away from us,” Zack said. “I wasn’t confident she could make the shot, so we let it walk. If I had any idea that later she would take a deer with a 206-yard shot, she could have gotten that one.”

All the deer were taken on a 550-acre farm in Bartow County.

Batey Kay said her 12-year-old brother, Bowen, was upset when he saw that she had taken a buck bigger than any he had ever taken. She said she will take one even larger than that.

“I’m going to keep hunting and I’ll definitely take one bigger,” she said. “They just have to grow up a little bit.”

She said the boys in her class all had the same reaction.

“They said ‘That’s big.’”

Zack, a game warden for Georgia DNR, said Batey Kay was hunting on the John Davis family farm in Bartow County.

“I think it’s remarkable that I have been hunting there 49 years and she killed a buck bigger than I have ever killed,” John Davis said.

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