a few times a week -- sometimes with her father, sometimes with her mother and sometimes with the whole family.
She plays baseball and football and is a cheerleader at Aberdeen Primary School. But hunting is her favorite sport.
"I like it a lot," she says. "I love it. It's not just a boy's sport."
She enjoys being out in the woods with her family.
"I like having peace and quiet, and hearing the nature sounds," she says.
Emma was out hunting with her mother, Karla, when she made her second kill. She and her mom heard and then spotted the deer. Her mother cocked Emma's rifle and handed it to her. She is too little to hold the gun up, so she rested it on the rail of the tree stand, took aim, and fired.
The recoil nearly knocked her over, she says. She could hear from the deer's cry that it was a hit.
"I saw him," she says. "I was speechless."
Emma's father, Carl, is an Aberdeen police officer. He was in Florida when Emma made her second kill Nov. 6. This is the first year that she has been old enough to hunt with the family.
She says that when she sees a target, she tries to control her breathing, but after firing a shot she can no longer contain her excitement.
"After I shoot, my breathing gets really fast, because I don't know if I killed it," she says. "I accidentally sometimes try to jump off the tree stand."
The Colasaccos hunt from a stand on their property behind their home on the outskirts of Aberdeen. Sometimes they go to Fort Bragg or Anson County to hunt. Emma's father insists that safety is a big concern.
"I do all the gun handling," he says. "Safety is a big issue. I'm a firm believer that safety starts at an early age. It's a lot easier to teach a child than an adult. It could get dangerous quick."
Emma's rifle, a youth-sized Thompson Pro Hunter, has to be cocked before it can be fired. Her parents do that for her. It keeps her from firing the gun accidentally. She is perfectly happy with the arrangement, because she is also worried about accidentally firing a shot. She doesn't want to scare off the game.
Emma hunts under her father's license. He keeps a kill record for her. North Carolina law says that at age 16, she will have to go through a hunter's safety course and purchase her own license.
Her father knows that some people will always say that 6 years old is too young to take a child hunting.
"I wouldn't debate it," he says. "There is a lot of liberal stuff out there with guns. I'm a firm believer that it starts as a kid."
When he comes home from work and puts away his sidearm, he says Emma knows not to touch it. He always asks her before hunting if she is sure she wants to go.
"I don't think any child should be forced into a sport they do not want to participate in," he says. "But if they want to, whether it be sports, Scouts or whatever, support makes them grow up to be doing the right thing."
Emma's father says he did try to talk her out of playing football, but she had her heart set on it. She wound up playing center.
Hunting is a Colasacco family tradition. Carl began hunting when he was 5 years old.
"The biggest thing I remember was having to be quiet and be still," he says. "That's real hard at that age."
He says the key to a good hunt is patience, and that Emma has already proven she has that.
"For a 6-year-old," he says, "she's got a lot more than I ever had."
Contact Matthew Moriarty at 693-2479 or by e-mail at moriarty@thepilot.com.
