I Tracked a Buck for 36 Hours to Find a Game Warden Had Already Taken the Antlers
BY Herschel Smith
2 hours, 38 minutes ago
Going over the timeline in his head, Harakal figured it had only been a few hours between the time the pheasant hunter found the deer and when he walked up on it. Unsure of what to do, he called back one of his friends, who encouraged him to report it to the Pennsylvania Game Commission. Harakal tried calling but didn’t get an answer as he walked back to his truck.
“I was just going home at that point. And I decided my season’s done. I’m not hunting for the rest of the year.”
Back at home, Harakal was about to hop in the shower when he got a call back from a PGC game warden. He shared the full story with the warden and agreed to meet him at the deer, and then he drove back to Shenango Lake for a fourth time.
Harakal still had the bone fragments in his pocket, and when they got to where the deer was still laying, he showed the game warden the missing puzzle piece. He said he still couldn’t believe someone had robbed him of the biggest buck he’d ever killed.
“The game warden tells me, ‘This is like one-in-a-million chances, but that is definitely your deer. And I don’t even know how to tell you this. But it’s our policy that when something like this happens, we cut the rack off.’”
The game warden then led Harakal back to his own truck, where he pulled the two antlers off his backseat and handed them over. He explained how the pheasant hunter had called the agency after finding the 8-point buck, and that he was just following standard procedure when he confiscated the antlers. Then he helped Harakal drag the buck out of the field.
Why is it your standard procedure to confiscate the antlers? Why do you believe they belong to you? How do you know “fair chase” is over at the point you ruin the game with a saw?
On November 10, 2025 at 8:08 pm, X said:
The way to not track a buck for 36 hours is to shoot the shoulder with a 165 grain bullet out of a .30-06… problem solved.
On November 10, 2025 at 8:15 pm, Herschel Smith said:
Yeah, I try for a high shoulder shot and I shoot 175 gr. But this was a bow shot.