Just after 8 a.m. Monday, Carl Skrobak of Saint Clair spotted two deer in Blythe Township.
"I was walking down the trail and it was off to my right. And there was another deer with it," said Skrobak, 32.
He took aim with his bolt-action rifle and fired on one, a seven-point buck.
"It didn't want to go down. We were following it all over the mountain for about a half hour," Skrobak said.
He said it took three rounds to put it down.
"It had to drag it a mile back to my truck," Skrobak said.
He said it was the first time in his life he bagged a buck.
"I've been hunting since I was 18. I had a lot of doe before that. But this is my first buck," Skroback said.
Skroback was among the hunters who were out in Schuylkill County on Monday for the first day of the two-week rifle deer season. The state Game Commission estimated more than 750,000 hunters would be taking to the woods across the state for buck and doe.
Chris Heckard, 25, of Lancaster, and George Fredericks, 55, of Port Carbon, were among the hunters who spent the morning near Tumbling Run Road in North Manheim Township.
Fredericks spent the morning sitting in his truck bed with his pump-action rifle.
"I shot a doe last year from here," he said, referring to the seat in the bed of his pickup.
But he wasn't having any luck Monday morning.
Heckard said about 11 a.m., he saw a deer cross Tumbling Run Road.
"It was a six-pointer. It was about 20 feet from me. And I was chasing it," Heckard said.
But he wasn't fast enough.
At noon Monday at Mar Lin Markets in Norwegian Township, Ian Petchulis, one of the business partners at the family-owned butcher shop, was busy skinning a doe.
His nephew, David George, 13, of Mar Lin, bagged it Monday morning.
Petchulis said it appeared to be an average year.
"By noon, we had about 10 hunters bring deer in, eight doe and a six-pointer and an eight-pointer," he said.
David Stoppi, 72, of West West Terrace, got the eight-pointer.
"I normally don't shoot deer every year, but that one I had to shoot. This is a trophy eight-pointer with a 19-inch spread. I'm going to get it mounted," Stoppi said Monday afternoon.
Stoppi couldn't recall the last time he bagged a buck, but said it might have been 15 years ago.
On Monday morning, he drove an ATV from his back yard a mile into the woods in Branch Township. He saw the buck at 9 a.m.
"I haven't seen one this size in a long time. There aren't as many deer as there used to be. These days, they have too many hunting seasons. There are too many seasons. There's a muzzleloader season. And they can use crossbows during archery season. And with the crossbows, they really wipe them out," Stoppi said.