Big bucks make for a deer season to remember

This is going to be tough to beat.

The game room is John Godfrey’s Natrona Heights home is a taxidermy showcase, with a little bit of everything. There’s a walleye and musky, bass and trout, a coyote and turkey, squirrels and pheasant and, soon, a bobcat, among other things.

And there are antlers. Plenty of them.

None, though, rival these. At least not as a set.

This fall, Godfrey, his son Patrick and grandson Chase all took bucks on state game lands near their camp in Tidioute, Warren County.

Talk about a memorable deer season.

Patrick and Chase got theirs from the same stand on the same morning in rifle season. John’s came from just a quarter mile away in archery season.

And all had big racks.

John’s is an 8-point with a 22-inch spread. Chase’s is an 8-point, too, with an 18-inch spread. And Patricks’s is a 9-point, with about a 14-inch spread.

“That’s a shame,” Patrick said with a laugh. “I got a 9-point and it’s the baby. When I first got it, I thought I might get it mounted. It’s my biggest deer with a gun.

“Then, when Chase got his, I was like, never mind. We’ll get your mounted instead.”

John, 65, got his buck in what is his first deer season hunting with a senior lifetime license. Chase, 15, got his – his first deer ever – in what is his last deer season of hunting with a junior license.

All are impressive.

“They’re all just really big for mountain deer,” John said. “And to get them all in the same year, very close to the same spot. I don’t want to call it a fluke because we’re good hunters. But it’s really something.”

Twice before, in 1997 and 1999, the Godfrey clan had seasons with three generations of hunters getting deer. That involved Patrick, John and John’s dad, Wilbert.

But those bucks included several spikes and 4-points. None rivaled these.

All three were in the camp the family’s had since 1952 to see it happen, too.

That John took his buck in archery season is no surprise.

A family friend, Rich Matuizek, got him started in the outdoors. He picked upa bow not long after and was soon addicted.

At one point, he carried a hay bale in the trunk of his car and shoot wooden arrows from a recurve on the football field at Indiana University of Pennsylvania while visiting his now wife Karen.

He killed a lot of bucks with bows over the year. Most of his whitetails, in fact, fell to an arrow rather than a bullet.

This year’s deer – his largest ever – came in his 50th season of archery hunting.

He went to camp for opening day of the rifle season anyway, just to be part of the action.

It came pretty quick.

Patrick and Chase were sitting back to back under a tree on opening day when a buck approached.

“It was coming right at us,” Patrick said. “It was right on us somehow before I could even tell Chase or say anything. So I had to just shoot it.”

That was exciting. He’d never killed a buck with Chase by his side, so the father-son team was pretty pumped up.

That was around 7:15 a.m. Patrick asked is Chase wanted to go back to camp or continue hunting; the teen decided to stay in the woods.

That proved a wise decision.

The hours started ticking by, so Patrick stretched out his legs and closed his eyes. He told Chase to wake him if a buck came by.

At 10:15 that morning, one did.

He didn’t spend a lot of time counting antler points: as a junior hunter, he’s permitted to take any buck with a spike at least three inches long.

He tried to wake his dad, saying “deer, deer, horns” several times.

Getting no response, he looked ahead, picked out an opening in the direction the deer was traveling, and killed it with one round from his single-shot .243 when it stepped into that space. That woke his dad up.

“He asked me like eight times, are you sure it had horns,” Chase said. “I kept telling him yes.”

“He was like, yeah dad, it had a big rack. I was like yeah, right,” Patriuck said. “Then when we walked up to it I was like, wow.

“I was extremely proud that he was able to do everything right on his own, though. It was cool to me that he wanted to stay and hunt all morning anyway, when he could have said he wanted to go back to camp because he was cold or hungry or whatever. And then to do everything right, just like he was taught, that was the neatest thing.”

They called John back at camp and he came and helped drag the deer out of the woods.

Now, all three deer are headed for the wall.

Patrick is having just the rack from his buck put on a plaque.

John and Chase are getting full shoulder mounts, though.

Making space for them on the wall is going to require a little re-arranging, John said. Space is getting scarce.

“I keep telling Karen we might need an addition,” he said with a laugh.

He doesn’t think he’ll get it. But that’s OK, he said.

This season was special enough on its own.

“It will never be beat,” he said.

Another great deer hunting story

Speaking of special deer…

There have been a lot of deer killed out of the Larimer Buckhorn camp in Tidioute over the years.

But this one was a first.

Eleven-year-old Madilyn Zurich of North Huntingdon killed a 6-point buck there on Nov. 4 while accompanied by her father, Ed. She was equipped with a Wicked Ridge crossbow.

She spotted the deer at about 8:30, when it was about 110 yards away. Slowly, it came closer and closer, headed for the decoy they had out.

“It’s a buck,” she whispered to her dad. “He’s not huge, he’s not small, but I’m gonna shoot this one.”

When it got to 20 yards and turned broadside, she did, making a perfect shot. The deer went only about 80 yards.

And just like that, Madilyn had her first deer ever.

Her mother Jean, grandparents and cousins were all in camp to help her celebrate. They made a big deal of it, of course.

But her buck is even more special than perhaps she realizes.

A lot of people have hunted from the family camp, men and women. They’ve taken a lot of deer.

“But she was the first female and first one in 73 years of the hunting lodge to get a deer with a bow,” said her grandmother, Marilyn Colinear. “Needless to say, we were all excited to see history being made.”