This is a pretty typical deer for me ..... a doe dressing out around 100 pounds or so, from Pennsylvania in 2006. She may be the plumpest deer I've ever killed, with more than an inch of tallow on her back.

I love to stillhunt with Dad's old Marlin .30-30. Yeah, I know it shows a certain lack of style to put a scope on a lever action, but my eyes aren't up to open sights. My Dad bought that Marlin for about $48 back around 1952, a couple of years before I was born. The gun handles like a dream, weighs practically nothing, and is so accurate I don't even want to clean it. This deer was about 80 yards off when I dropped the hammer on a Remington cartridge my Dad bought in about 1967. You can say what you want about the .30-30, but it's probably made more venison than any other caliber. In the PA woods where I hunt, the longest shot I've ever taken was less than 100 yards. You're lucky to even see a deer a hundred yards off, let alone get a clear shot, but if you do, Dad's Marlin can put a whole box of softnoses into a match book at that range. The new Hornady LeveRevolution seems to be even more accurate, but I haven't used them on deer yet. For terminal performance, I like best the Starfire from PMC Eldorado, but I don't know if they are even made anymore. I've still got 5 rounds from Dad's box tho, plus a couple of boxes of Starfire .... so who knows if I'll ever use the Hornadys on deer.

Pennsylvania has huge amounts of fine public hunting land. But PA also has about a million hunters (no kidding ... PA has more deer hunters than just about any other state) turning out for opening day of rifle season, which falls on the Monday after Thanksgiving. And unfortunately, PA has a lot of guys who don't have much respect for private property. I've got some land there, mostly it belongs to my partner, who is majority owner. But he doesn't hunt, so it is my land for hunting purposes. We've found lots of people hunting our place without permission. We've found deer carcasses with only the hind quarters and loins removed. We've found tree stands. I found one guy driving around our fields with his son, during muzzleloader season, in his pickup. The son was driving (they looked so much alike, they had to be father and son) and the father was in the passenger seat with a centerfire rifle! I've been hunting this land since I was a kid, he told me. That's not everybody, of course. Lots of people have asked, and we generally give them permission, particularly if I've already gotten my venison! As the US population continues to grow, hunting land will be at more and more of a premium. This seems to me an irreversible trend, unless the number of hunters drops faster than the growth of the population. And with so many women taking up hunting, that's not going to happen. Anybody ever have a problem with women hunters trespassing on their land? I haven't heard of it.

Anyway .... I'm smirking a little bit over this deer because of how she came to be mine. I was hunting my friend's property for the last time, due to development plans, and I was vexed because we'd seen almost nothing. I had little doubt the deer had made themselves scarce and invisible because the property had been hunted hard by trespassers and poachers for several weeks. Mostly, I stillhunt if possible, but I usually sit on a log for the first hour or so each morning, until the sun is good and up and I can see well. This particular morning, just after sunup, some yoyo comes and positions himself directly in front of me, behind a tree, barely a hundred yards off. I was wearing plenty of orange, as Pennsylvania requires, and there's no way he didn't see me. I kept thinking he'd move away, but he didn't. My buddy hadn't given anyone else permission to hunt his land, but we'd decided not to confront any trespassers, given that this would probably be the last year we could hunt there anyway. After a little while, I got aggravated and moved off to start my stillhunting. It took me 20 minutes or so to circle around a big patch of briers and work my way up a hill above the trespasser. Once I'd put the hump of the hill between him and me, I slowed down and began to really concentrate. It couldn't have been more than 10 minutes before I jumped some deer on a little bench just above me. They'd picked a good spot to bed -- very thick -- and they boiled off without giving me more than a glimpse, but there seemed to be about 10 of them. They might have gotten my scent, but more likely they'd heard a tiny noise, and probably they only bolted because deer in PA rifle season are on ultra-red alert after the first hour of the first day, and this was the second day. Thinking they might not be sure of what was going on, I stayed stock still. A few minutes later I could hear them come pounding back. Now THAT seemed weird. They were suddenly all around me and moving fast. The Marlin is a perfect gun for hitting a running deer, but that's not a shot I am comfortable with, so I just let them go, hoping one of them would stop within range. But no luck yet. What happened next was why I was smirking. The deer headed down the hill, apparently detected the trespasser and split up ... from the sound of it, some running left, some right, and this doe came back up the hill and stopped around 80 yards from me, and looked down toward the trespasser. She gave me a nice broadside shot at about 6 inches of chest, in between some grape vines thick as my forearm. At the shot she took off and I could hear her bust into that insanely thick patch of timber slashings and brambles that I'd skirted on the hillside. I couldn't see where she went because the land dropped off sharply, but I could hear her progress stop, and then it sounded to me like she thrashed in one spot and was quiet. Again, I stayed still for a few minutes, then went to check for blood. As I stood over the evidence of a lung hit, over the lip of the bench scurries a young fellow who seemed quite surprised to find me there. He said he had permission to hunt a neighbor's property, and off he went. I stood on the hillside, looking out over the thicket where my deer disappeared. Much to my surprise, I saw the first trespasser had moved and now stood near the edge of the briers. I called out to him asking if he'd seen my deer.

" Did you shoot?" he asked.
" Yeah, you must have seen the deer come crashing thru here!"
" I heard something, but I didn't see any deer. Was it a buck or doe?"
" Doe, shot in the left side of the chest. Sounded like she was thrashing right down there. I've got a good blood trail. I'll just follow her up .... I think she's right close."
" OK, I'll give you a hand ...... Whoa!!! Here she is, right in front of me! I almost tripped over her!!...."

Hmmmm. So I go down there, and talk to the guy a little, and he takes off. Turns out that he and the young guy and a few others were driving deer on our land, and I just happened to get into the middle of their drive, and was the only one who got a shot. If the deer that I spooked hadn't run into the young driver, they wouldn't have come back. If they hadn't run into the first trespasser on their way down the hill, I still wouldn't have gotten a shot. And if my doe hadn't fallen right in front of the first trespasser, I would have tracked her on my hands and knees thru a horrendous thicket. So, the whole thing struck me as pretty funny.

Also kind of funny, again by pure chance, my younger son killed a deer that was pushed to him by another bunch of trespassers doing a drive on this same property. That was back in 2001.

Usually in PA and NJ, I wear Bunlite Pants. Here I am wearing Bunlites and Frontier in the original Timber pattern, plus our High Plains Reversible Vest in Blaze Orange and Blowdown. I am also wearing the reversible Scout Hat in Blaze and Blowdown. The temperature started out around 20 or 25, and was probably 30 when I shot the deer. I may switch the Frontier for a Bushman, and I normally wear one layer of Ullfrotte. And this is pretty much what I always wear in temps down to 15 or 20 Fahrenheit, and as high as 80 or even 85F for spring bear. I may wear heavier or lighter Ullfrotte, depending on the wind and how I feel and how long I expect to be out. In 2001, the 2nd day of the rifle season was about 0F, with high winds. I didn't take a deer, but I was fine in Bunwarmers and Standmaster Jacket System.

I don't care how much it rains anymore, I don't wear rain gear. In 2007, we went back to my buddy's place, despite the development, to try to squeeze in one last PA rifle opener. I hunted dark to dark in about 38F temperature and almost non-stop rain ..... sometimes HEAVY rain. I wore Ullfrotte, Bunlites, Bushman and High Plains Vest. I stayed warm and dry, except that my Railroader Hat (because of Pennsylvania's Blaze Orange laws) was dripping rain down my back pretty steady. And even there, my back was only damp, not wet, and I was warm. If I had worn a Boonie hat, I wouldn't even have had the drip on my neck. I can't say I understand how the wool repels rain so well, but it does. If I was sitting a stand, the rain might have soaked thru my thighs (the Omnilite doesn't resist water as well as the Omnitherm), but I was on my feet almost the whole day. You can't beat a steady rain if you like to stillhunt. I never did see any deer tho, which really surprised me, because I smelled them a bunch of times. They must have tiptoed off just in front of me. But boy, that wool can help a stillhunter .... I eased up within 10 yards of a bedded coyote before he detected me and took off ..... and he was bedded under a hemlock in the midst of a blackberry thicket. There was no way I would have gotten that close in any kind of dedicated rain gear ..... just too noisy against all the scratching and grabbing brambles. I didn't see him until he blasted out of his bed. If I'd shot a yote in his bed at 10 yards, well, I might have been tough to live with for a while!!