Edgar girl ‘fills the freezer’ with trophy 15-point buck

When walking into the Edgar Family Restaurant recently, 15-year-old Ashlynn Baeseman is greeted by an older lady who calls her by an interesting title.

“Hello deer-slayer,” the lady says as Ashlynn smiles. “I still can’t believe you got that big deer.”

“That big deer” she’s referring to is 15-point buck Ashlynn landed while on a hunting trip at Little Lakes Memories in Irma on Oct. 22. The excursion was arranged by members of Central Wisconsin Fin, Fur and Feather (CWF3), who organize a similar trip every year for a worthy hunter. Little Lakes Memories is run by people who make special accommodations for hunters who need them.

Aaron Baesemen, Ashlynn’s father, said his family is really into hunting, and every other member had bagged a buck before his daughter got a chance to get one. With a Boone and Crocket score of 178 and 7/8 inches and a mass measurement of 60 inches, her buck is now the undisputed record-holder among the family members.

“I don’t know if anyone will get a buck as big as yours,” he tells his daughter.

Dead Deer Don’t Lie, a hunting group the Baesemans belong to, has a record book going back to 1989, and now Ashlynn’s buck is at the top of the list.

Ashlynn, who is legally blind due to a rare birth defect called Peters plus anomaly, smiles brightly whenever she or her dad talks about the monster buck she took down with two squeezes of her finger. She was assisted by a camera mounted on the scope of her gun, a 6.5 Creedmoor rifle, and helped by her father, who provided verbal directions.

“I can tell her which direction to go -left, right, up, down -- and then I tell her when she’s on the animal and she can shoot,” he said.

A video of the moment she gets the kill shot was posted on CWF3’s Facebook page, and has been viewed more than 2,700 times so far.

Eric Totzke, president of CWF3, reached out to Aaron Baeseman after seeing a video on Facebook of the father and daughter practicing her shooting earlier this year. Totzke offered them a chance to hunt for a trophy deer hunt in the fall.

“I asked Ashlynn and she was super fired up about it,” Aaron said.

After Ashlynn was picked for the trip, they visited Little Lakes Memories in September so the staff could meet with her and she could get a sense of what the place is like. The short day trip really stoked Ashlynn’s enthusiasm as the hunting weekend got closer.

“I was going to fill the freezer,” she said, referring to all the venison she planned on bringing home to her family.

She certainly accomplished that goal. The buck she got produced 30 pounds of sausage meet, 10 packages of steaks, and six to eight packages of back straps, according to her father. Aaron said his family consumes a lot of venison, so it’s nice to have a freezer full of meat ready to eat.

“We don’t buy much beef,” he said. “We probably eat three to four, sometimes five deer a year.”

Even though his daughter’s hunting opportunities are limited by her lack of sight, Aaron does everything he can to include her in the family’s outdoor activities.

“Every night her and I go look for deer, and even though she can’t see them, I tell her and she keeps a tab,” he said. “So, we have a record book of what day it was and how many bucks and does we saw.”

Aaron also brings Ashlynn along when he goes hunting, but this was her first chance to do it herself.

On the day of the hunt, Ashlynn and Aaron were joined by a guide, Ashlynn’s 10-year-old brother, Mac, and J.C. Stubbe, a CWF3 board member who recorded the whole experience. They were all tucked inside a deer blind on the ground situated near a feeding pile.

The trophy whitetail that Ashlynn eventually harvested was already at the bait pile when the group first arrived and started setting up. The hulking animal immediately left the area.

“Of course, I thought we blew it,” Aaron said, laughing. “Normally a buck like that is not going to come back.”

Fortunately for Ashlynn, the buck was hungry and came back into sight about five minutes later. Ashlynn was carrying her little brother’s bolt-action rifle, which required some finagling in order to mount the camera properly on the scope.

“The bolt hits the camera, so I cannot put the camera on the gun until after it’s loaded,” Aaron explained. “So, I load the gun, put the camera on and get the camera secured and everything’s ready to go.”

Ashlynn’s father was busy setting up the camera and using a balled up glove to adjust a Lead Sled shooting rest as the buck moved into position.

“I didn’t even have time to sit down,” he said. “I was still kneeling down beside her, saying ‘OK, now we’ve got to be patient.’” Aaron told his daughter to pull the trigger, and the buck took a broadside hit before running and stopping behind a tree. Before she could take her second shot, though, her dad had to remove the camera, reload the gun, put the camera back on and get her back into position.

The second shot took the deer to the ground. It was an emotional moment for both Ashlynn and her father.

Thinking back, Ashlynn claims she wasn’t nervous at all. Her father disputes this.

“You can talk smart, but you were a little bit nervous,” he says to her.

Even though the hunting was done in less than half an hour, the family stayed the rest of the weekend to fully soak in the experience. Ashlynn’s mother, Sommer, and her grandfather, Randy King, were both there to help her celebrate her accomplishment, and they were also joined by another family of close friends. On that Saturday night, they enjoyed a steak dinner -- as requested by Ashlynn.

By coincidence, Ashlynn turned 15 on the Monday after she nabbed her 15-point buck.

When she returned to school, she sent a picture of her buck to the principal of Edgar High School, who forwarded it to members of the staff. She said all of the hunters at the school, including one classmate, were a little jealous of the buck and asked her a lot of questions about her experience.

Looking ahead, Aaron hopes to keep his daughter interested in deer hunting by getting her involved in an outing next October for disabled hunters organized by the Central Wisconsin Conservation Club in Edgar. He normally volunteers, and the leader of the group has been trying to get him to bring Ashlynn out for a hunt.

Aaron said Ashlynn’s experience at Little Lakes Memories is just the starting point.

“It was her first hunt, but it won’t be her last,” he said.