PJ Reilly buck

The author poses with the 10-point buck he shot on the last day of the Pennsylvania firearms deer season.

Starting off a newspaper column with a cliché is so cliché.

But this week, I can’t help it.

Sometimes as a Pennsylvania deer hunter, it’s better to be lucky than good.

Having started the game later than most my age, I’m only in my fourth decade chasing whitetails in the Keystone State.

But at this point, I’ve got more hunting experience and time in the woods than I’ve ever had. I know what to do, where to go and how to get the job done.

With cellular trail cameras, electronic mapping and weather tools and modern shooting equipment, I’ve got more and better gear at my disposal than at any other time in my hunting career.

But with all the skills and tools I have right now, I will take sheer, blind luck any day of the season and twice on the three Sundays when we are allowed to hunt deer in this state.

I was reminded of that on Saturday, Dec. 9 — the last day of Pennsylvania’s 2023 firearms deer season.

First, a little background.

I was born and raised in Chester County, and except for a 15-year period when I lived in New Holland, have lived there my whole life.

And I’ve hunted western Chester County through my entire hunting career.

Every Pennsylvania buck I’ve ever shot has come from the rural areas of western Chester County. Except for maybe four or five does that I shot in Lancaster County, every other doe I’ve taken in Pennsylvania has come from western Chester County.

Over four decades, I have seen the landscape and the deer hunting change in rural Chester County.

We are now in the first half of the third decade of my hunting area being part of Wildlife Management Unit 5C, which — until this year when it ranked second — has had the most doe tags issued every year, among all WMUs. At one time, you may recall, the allocation actually was “unlimited.”

We are also in the first half of the third decade of WMU 5C having the most liberal bag limit for antlerless deer. Hunters here for nearly 30 years have been allowed to shoot as many does as they could get tags for, where the maximum in the rest of the state historically was three.

We are also in the first half of the third decade of WMU 5C having the longest deer seasons in the state.

Archery season starts around Sept. 15 and runs straight through to gun season; then there’s a break until Dec. 26, when it picks up again until the end of January.

We have two weeks of firearms buck hunting like the rest of the state, but we have seven weeks of firearms doe season, as compared to two everywhere else.

All of this is to say, the deer hunting in the rural parts of western Chester County is not what it used to be. For me, the heyday was the early to mid-1990s.

There were way more deer around, way more bucks around and way more quality bucks around.

I remember one bowhunt in the early 1990s when 12 bucks filed past me in a line. I missed a shot at one of them.

Those days are long gone.

Why am I telling you all this?

So you can understand my mindset when I go hunting in this area today.

My expectations for filling a tag are low.

I run trail cameras from August through January.

I mainly get pictures of does. The bucks my cameras capture are mostly spikes and forkhorns.

The 15-inch-wide eight-point buck that used to seemingly be behind every tree in this area is now rare. The true trophies are even rarer.

Most of my hunts come and go without a deer sighting.

Rest assured, I’m OK with all this.

I know there are better places in Pennsylvania to hunt — more deer and bigger bucks.

But the area where I hunt is right outside my front door. Other places in Pennsylvania are not.

I hunt four properties that all are within 15 minutes of my house.

That’s what’s important to me. That’s what I like about my hunting spots, and so I accept the hunting conditions.

On Dec. 9, I headed out to a property about 2 miles from home where I am only allowed to hunt with archery gear, even in gun season.

My plan was to hunt a spot where I’d been getting consistent daylight pictures of a couple does. The land manager wants does shot, so I will do what’s asked of me to maintain hunting access to this property.

I hadn’t gotten a picture of a buck bigger than a spike on any of my cameras on this property in nearly two months, so my expectations were strictly antlerless.

I got to my hunting spot around 12:30 p.m., giving me plenty of time to get into the woods with my climbing tree stand well before the late afternoon prime-time hours.

By about 1:10, I was up the tree in my stand with all my gear.

At 1:30 p.m., some movement off to my right caught my attention.

Looking through the dense woods, I spotted a deer running. Within seconds, I identified a good-sized set of antlers.

When I saw the buck was running toward me, I turned around to get my bow off the hook where it was hanging.

By the time I connected my trigger release to the bowstring, the buck was approaching a clear shooting lane in front of me, so I drew back the string to get ready.

I yelled when the buck entered the lane, and he stopped. But I had no idea how far he was, since I never had time to grab my rangefinder.

In the old days, we didn’t have rangefinders, so I had to revert to 1995 me and judge the distance as best I could just by looking at the space between us.

I figured he was about 40 yards and aimed accordingly.

The arrow flew perfectly, but I felt like it hit the deer a bit low.

My fear dissipated quickly, however, when the buck sprinted about 60 yards and then crashed to the ground.

I said out loud over and over, “I can’t believe that just happened. I can’t believe that just happened.”

The whole encounter was over in the blink of an eye. From the time I saw the buck until he crashed, I’d guess no more than 15 seconds had passed.

After I quit shaking, I climbed down and hustled over to grab the antlers of a 10-point that is the third biggest buck I’ve ever shot in all my years hunting in Pennsylvania.

I had never seen this buck before. I had never gotten a single picture of it on any of my cameras.

If you had told me at 10 a.m. Dec. 9 that I would go out to the woods two hours later, with a bow on the last day of Pennsylvania’s 2023 gun season, and shoot a 10-point buck I had never seen before — my third-best Pennsylvania buck — at 1:30 p.m., just 20 minutes after climbing into the stand, I’d have said, “There’s no way in this or any other universe that’s happening.”

It’s better to be lucky than good.

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