Pa. archer: 'It was like hitting the lottery' after three months of hunting

Perseverance paid off for a Pennsylvania archer who shot the buck of his lifetime in January.

Scott Rodgers, 42, of Lewis Run, McKean County, harvested a trophy 14-point buck with an 18.5-inch inside spread, using his crossbow.

He hunted most days during the early archery season, which began in October, and general rifle deer season after Thanksgiving. But he didn’t get a buck. After Christmas he pulled out his crossbow for the late archery season as he loves spending time in the woods.

Rodgers was hunting about 15 minutes from his home on the afternoon of Jan. 9. He was on a property that has an apple orchard and thick underbrush. He was thinking about an older, 5-point buck that he knew was on the property and thought it would be a good deer for this late in the hunting season.

“Hopefully I’ll get a shot at him,” he thought.

Soon five doe appeared, and it wasn’t long before a 14-point buck walked out into view about 125 yards away. Behind him was a large, 8-point deer.

“Oh my gosh, this is going to happen,” he remembers telling himself as the deer worked their way toward him. At 40 yards, he took the shot, and the deer ran into a thick brushy area. “I grabbed my crossbow, jumped out of my ground blind and ran,” he said, hearing the deer crash where he ran into a tree. “It was surreal. Everything lined up perfectly."

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He believes the buck was interested in the doe, and he let his guard down.

“He was rutting for sure, I could smell him. One of those does must have been in heat,” Rodgers said. 

The 4.5-year-old deer was estimated to weigh 185 to 190 pounds and the rack measured 147.5 inches.

“It’s a blessing to harvest an animal like this. I just got lucky," he said.

He shared some of the venison with the property owner, who told Rodgers that he couldn't think of anyone in the world who deserved that buck more.

Rodgers believes the deer was staying on a nearby property that was timber cut then moved down to this property where the doe were feeding and bedding. Rodgers knew there was a large buck in the area but didn’t believe he would ever see it.

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His trail camera captured a nighttime photo of the buck on Sept. 22 then again on four other nights through the fall.

“These deer in general, when you see a big deer like that, you’re never in your whole world thinking you’re going to harvest that buck. They are so nocturnal,” he said.

In the early archery season, he missed a large 8-point, but he feels everything worked out for the best. “There’s nothing that can keep me down. You have to keep going,” he said about hunting in colder weather after the holidays.

He tries to wait for mature bucks before taking a shot. “I passed on a lot of deer this year,” he said about seeing some 6 and 7-point bucks. He hunted more than three months on both public and private property this season.

“You can’t give up,” he said. “I still can’t believe it. ... It was like hitting the lottery."

Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him atbwhipkey@gannett.com and sign up for our weekly Go Outdoors PA newsletter email on this website's homepage under your login name. Follow him on Facebook@whipkeyoutdoors.