'That thing's a monster': Pennsylvania deer hunters share their big buck stories

Hunters across Pennsylvania are finding big trophy bucks since the start of the two-week rifle deer season Nov. 25.

Rifle deer season is a statewide tradition that attracts hundreds of thousands of hunters who shoot more than 400,000 deer a year.

Here are the stories from a few of the successful hunters who have found unusually large bucks this fall.

Warren County 10-point

Jake Lawson, 33, of Warren, shot a mature 10-point Saturday morning while hunting in the Allegheny National Forest in the Scandia area of Warren County. The rack has an inside spread of 18 inches and just under 20 inches on the outside.

“He has some pretty good mass on him,” Lawson said. The rack has a rough score of 158⅛ inches before deductions and 132⅝ inches overall. “That’s the biggest one I’ve got to date. I’ve got some nice 8s, and nice 9s, but I never got a 10,” he said.

Lawson hunted the area where he had seen a nice buck more than a week earlier while helping to fight a brush fire. He’s a paid firefighter for the City of Warren and also volunteers with the Glade Volunteer Fire Department.

“I can’t say it’s the same buck, but I think it is,” he said.

The deer appeared shortly after 7 a.m. and he was able to down the deer with his .270. “I was really excited when I got up to him. I knew he was nice, but he was a lot nicer when I got up to him,” he said.

Lawson said he enjoys hunting on public land and feels that makes his deer even more of a trophy. “There’s a lot of woods and you just have to be in the right spot at the right time. Those deer basically eat acorns, they’re not farm deer. They can run from hill to hill to hill. I think it’s a trophy for the area it was taken in,” he said.

His father, John Lawson, was able to help him with a long uphill drag. “It was a special moment for me and my dad to take him out together,” Lawson said. He plans to have a shoulder mount made.

Lycoming County 12-point

Jacob Hilkert, 12, Muncy Valley in Lycoming County, bagged a 12-point Saturday while hunting with his father, Levi Hilkert, in Unityville. The antlers have an outside spread of 21½ inches.

The deer was on the radar of several hunters. “There was talk about it, we normally hunt in that area,” Levi Hilkert said. “People have been seeing him throughout archery season and the summer. (Jacob) was fortunate enough to get him.”

Saturday morning they were hunting out of a blind along a field when the bruiser showed up trailing six does. Jacob was able to make a 325-yard shot on the deer with his .243 Winchester.

“I was shocked when I saw it,” Jacob said. “I wasn’t expecting it to come with all the places people hunt around us. It felt great. I thought I accomplished something big.”

“He’s the talk of the area,” Levi Hilkert said.

The deer will become a shoulder mount for their living room, near the television. “He wants to be able to look at it all the time,” Levi Hilkert said.

Clarion County 11-point

Makenzie Lupole, 18, of Leeper, was hunting with her father, Jason Lupole, when she shot a large 11-point buck Sunday in Clarion County. The outside spread of the rack was 20½ inches.

This is the biggest of the nine bucks she’s shot over the 11 years she has been hunting.

“When I walked up to him, I didn’t realize how big he was until I picked up the other side and I started crying," she said,

She made the approximately 40-yard shot with a .308 Weatherby she received from her grandfather.

“I didn’t look even really look at the points. I just saw the one side and said, ‘Oh my God,’” she said. “It was amazing."

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Her sister, Kylee Lupole, 14, shot an 8-point in archery season that had a similar spread. “You guys are ruining this, you have nowhere to go from here,” Jason Lupole said with a smile.

Somerset County 13-point

A Somerset County hunter who has been chasing deer for more than a half-century got his buck of a lifetime while archery hunting on Halloween.

William “Gabo” Stoppe, 68, of Boswell, shot a heavy antlered 13-point with a crossbow while hunting in Forbes State Forest on Laurel Mountain. The rack has a rough score of 165 inches and an inside spread of 18 inches.

“I was pretty lucky that day,” he said. He made mock scrapes on the ground to help attract deer to his hunting spot. That morning a doe walked toward him and lay down in the laurel.

“Then here he comes, and I saw the antlers and he was staring at her,” he said. “He didn’t even see me. It was all luck, and I’m so glad it happened so fast that I didn’t have to watch him coming in real slow. I just turned around and there he was coming in looking at her."

After the shot, he walked to the deer thinking it was a nice 8-point, but soon discovered it was much bigger. “I never got a thick one like this,” he said about getting many deer over the years, but never one this heavy. It weighed more than 200 pounds.

“It took us three hours to get him to the truck," he said.

He’s having the deer mounted and it will be placed on his wall between mounts of an elk and a cinnamon phase black bear.

Forest County 8-point

Nick Gilara of Fryburg, Clarion County, had waited more than a decade to get his first buck. The public lands hunter met the moment Saturday morning in the mountains of Forest County.

“My favorite number is 13 and it was my 13th year of hunting. Just that morning I had a feeling, the first day of rifle. I archery hunt and had a couple close calls in archery, but in rifle, I woke up and had a feeling that it was going to happen,” he said.

That morning Gilara, 21, saw four does coming his way. Soon another doe appeared and was followed by a large buck. “He had his head down,” chasing the deer, he said. Gilara pulled up his .350 Legend rifle and shot from about 150 yards.

He'd sighted in the scope on his new rifle just on the day after Thanksgiving.

He remembers shaking from adrenaline and excitement after the shot. He waited for his dad, Matt Gilara, who was hunting nearby, to join him to walk up to the deer. His dad told him, “That thing’s a monster. That’s bigger than anything I shot.”

“I just kept smiling until we got back to the truck," Justin Gilara said.

The buck has 8 points with a split brow tine and a spread is just under 21 inches on the outside. His taxidermist aged the buck at more than 4.

“I want to thank my dad, younger brother Isaac Gilara and two friends, Chase Hotchkiss and Wade Snyder, and Clay Newcomb (a podcaster) for keeping me motivated,” he said about hunting that many years. “If I wouldn’t have shot a deer this year, I don’t know if I would have kept hunting. I was so discouraged.”

Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him at bwhipkey@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, and Instagram at whipkeyoutdoors.

This article originally appeared on The Daily American: PA deer hunters share stories of their 2023 trophy bucks