‘I Plan to Do This My Whole Life.’ 13-Year-Old Texas Girl Completes the Super 10 Slam

At just 13 years old, Stormy Cunningham from Dripping Springs, Texas, has accomplished a milestone few adult hunters ever achieve, let alone someone her age. On April 16, Stormy completed the Grand Slam Club/Ovis Super Ten of North America Big Game when she shot a mountain lion in the Davis Mountains of Texas.

The GSCO Super Ten is one of the most prestigious achievements in big-game hunting. To earn it, a hunter must successfully harvest at least one species from each of 10 categories of North American big game: bear, deer, elk, caribou, moose, goat, antelope, sheep, bison/muskox, and cats. Stormy’s mountain lion was her 10th and final species. 

Stormy isn’t the only member of her family to achieve an elite big-game milestone at such a young age. Her older sister, Cami, was only 13 when she became the youngest female and the second youngest hunter to complete the North American Sheep Grand Slam, one of the most respected achievements in the hunting world. 

When Cami made headlines in 2022, Stormy was only 10 and an accomplished big game hunter, too. Just weeks before Cami sealed the deal on her Sheep Grand Slam, Stormy dropped an impressive Dall sheep that measured 42 inches on one side. For the Cunningham family, it’s a tradition for kids to go on their first Dall sheep hunt in Alaska after their 10th birthday. That ritual started when Stormy and Cami’s grandfather, Barry, took their father, Russell when he was the same age.

While the family was in Las Vegas for the GSCO Convention the following year for Cami’s recognition, Stormy set her own lofty goal — completing the Super Ten. 

Accomplishing a Super Ten takes far more than marksmanship. It also requires tons of planning, travel to some of the most remote and rugged regions on the planet, and a heaping dose of mental and physical toughness. Even though Stormy already had half the requirements under her belt (antelope, Dall sheep, Alaska Yukon moose, grizzly bear, and whitetail deer), finishing the rest of the goal would take some serious commitment and hard work. 

“My parents always told me, if your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough,” Stormy tells Outdoor Life. 

Stormy had the opportunity to knock another species off the list shortly after the convention, when there was an opening for a muskox hunt in Greenland. 

“One of the requirements for Super Ten is either a bison or a muskox,” Russell says. “She really wanted to do muskox because most bison hunts, unless you can get to Alaska, just aren’t much of a hunt. We wanted her to have an adventure.”

Although Russell had taken Stormy on all of her hunts up to that point, her mom, Carly, stepped in to accompany her to Greenland. 

“I was very nervous about it, but Russell had total confidence that I could do it,” says Carly, who grew up mostly watching her dad and brother do the hunting. “She didn’t need my help at all. She’s so confident with all of the hunting stuff that she did everything on her own. I was pretty much just there to be her photographer and videographer.”

Stormy tagged a Greenland muskox on April 4, 2024 (she also shot an arctic fox, snowshoe hare, and a ptarmigan the same day). 

Last year was a busy one for Stormy. In addition to the muskox, she killed a Brooks Range caribou in August, a Rocky Mountain elk in New Mexico in October, and a Kodiak mountain goat later the same month. 

Stormy hunted her home state of Texas to finish off the list, but she went home with an unpunched tag after her hunt. 

“It was a lot tougher hunt than I thought it would be,” says Carly, who accompanied Stormy on her west Texas lion hunt, too. “We tracked two huge lions over two separate days with the dogs running for more than 11 hours each day. We still came back without a lion.”

Determined to finish her goal, Stormy and her mom returned to Highwest Outfitters last week to try again. This time, Stormy got her cat on the first day. 

Russell is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, and he’s been able to provide Stormy and her sister Cami with some incredible — and expensive — hunting opportunities. As Russell told us in 2022, he specifically chose a career that would allow him and his family to go on hunts like these. Still, he stresses that the girls still put in a tremendous amount of work to achieve their goals. 

“They are the ones putting in the miles in the mountains with a backpack,” Russell says, noting that Stormy hiked more than 50 miles to get her Dall sheep, and it took Cami two trips and 24 days to tag her stone sheep. “But what they’re gaining is all the grit and determination and bonding. You can’t buy that.”

Although pursuing the Super Ten has taken Stormy to some exciting, far-flung locations, her Alaskan sheep hunt is her most cherished. 

“My Dall sheep was my favorite because it’s so amazing that my dad shot one when he was ten,”  Stormy says. “And then my sister and then I got to carry on the tradition.”

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When the Cunningham sisters aren’t hiking mountains in pursuit of big game, they spend their time performing music together, team roping, and cheerleading. Although both of them have accomplished monumental hunting goals, they are far from finished. When asked what they plan to do next, they pointed out that it’s currently turkey season in Texas. 

“I plan to do this my whole life,” Stormy says. “Hopefully, when I’m 80 years old, I can still climb up that mountain.”

The post ‘I Plan to Do This My Whole Life.’ 13-Year-Old Texas Girl Completes the Super 10 Slam appeared first on Outdoor Life.

Source: https://www.outdoorlife.com/hunting/stormy-cunningham-super-10/