NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas (Reuters) - In a Texas contest to bag the biggest buck of the hunting season, 88-year-old grandmother Viola Meckel is the best shot of them all.

She is currently winning the competition in Comal County, north of San Antonio, with a 98-pound deer she gunned down earlier this month from the back door of her rural home.

Meckel said on Friday she spotted the deer and grabbed a rifle she keeps by the door just for such moments.

"I'd had him in the scope several times, but it was too far away," she said. "Finally, I saw the buck coming up into my yard, and I shot him and I got him."

It was the fifth buck she has downed in the past three seasons. Meckel said her late husband taught her to shoot and she's been hunting for years.

"It's quite a sport. I do enjoy it," she said.

Unfortunately, the excitement of the hunt may have been too much because Meckel later had a heart attack and is currently recovering in the hospital.

While the deer is small by hunting standards, it represents a growing population in an area becoming a suburb of San Antonio.

The contest comes to an end in early January. The winner gets a new hunting rifle

Big_Bear: Who would dare show up Granny?

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