ISLE OF WIGHT—For Faith Johnson, 11/11/11 turned into a lucky day.

The 15-year-old Franklin girl bagged a 10-point monster buck with a muzzleloader in Isle of Wight County. Faith brought down the 162-pound deer with a single shot from 100 yards away.

What made the day even better was sharing the hunt with her dad, Grady Johnson, whose illness has kept him out of the woods for 2½ years.

“It was a great time for me and my dad,” Faith said. “He never gets out and hasn’t had a chance to fish, and he loves to fish.”

Hunting in a field, the Johnsons saw three doe and the buck followed.

“It was right before dark,” Faith said. “My dad saw it first.”

“(I told her) there’s a big deer on the right,” Grady Johnson added. “She turned and saw him.”

Faith was so nervous, she said it was hard to hold the gun.

“My heart felt like it was actually moving,” she said. “I almost thought I was not going to make the shot.”

After shooting the deer, Faith said she saw another deer run into the woods. Initially, she assumed it was the big buck, but it wasn’t. When they approached the deer, they counted 10 points; an 11th point was about a half inch long, so it could not be legally counted. The antlers also had a 19¾-inch spread.

This is the second deer she has harvested this fall; Faith took her first with a bow. She killed five deer last year.

Faith plans to get the 10-point mounted.