The Gram Slam Girl
Article taken from Hunting Magazine - Winter 1999
Dave Henerson

Maybe they'll call the movie "Jeana's Excellent Adventure" or "Junior Miss Slam '99." Regardless of title, the footage has been shot. Joe Sears videotaped his 10-year-old daughter Jeana's entire turkey-hunting season last spring - all five days of it. He also enlisted witnesses, saved the hunting tags and forwarded the documentation to Guinness' World Records for consideration.

You see, Jeana, a fifth-grade student at North Spencer Christian School in upstate New York, may be the youngest person to ever take the North American Grand Slam of wild turkeys - Osceola, Eastern, Merriam's and Rio Grande subspecies. More than three months prior to her 11th birthday, she achieved this feat in slightly more than a month.

"My friends at school think it's pretty cool," says Jeana in adolescent vernacular, referring to the most important reaction in a child's life. It's difficult to think of the tall, poised young lady as a 10-year-old with Barbie dolls and dollhouses.

But the facts remain: Jeana Sears was 10 years, eight months and 19 days old when she completed the four-bird, four-state, four-shot odyssey on a snowy April 18 morning near Trinidad, Colorado.

Like Father, Like Daughter
Joe Sears, a veteran hunting guide and game call manufacturer from Spencer, New York, orchestrated the journey and accompanied Jeana the fateful spring weekend when she took the third and fourth of America's huntable wild turkey subspecies in whirlwind style on April 17 and 18.