For The Record: Jocilyn Depetro

For The Record

By Ralph Scherder

Jocilyn Depetro
165 4/8” Boone & Crockett
Washington County, PA

Many hunters have a lucky shirt or a lucky gun. Maybe even a lucky hat. In 2005, Jocilyn Depetro found a lucky number: 13.
On the 13th day of Pennsylvania’s rifle season, 13-year-old Jocilyn killed a 13-point buck. The deer’s rack, scored as a non-typical, net-scored 165 4/8 inches Boone & Crockett.
“This is her second buck,” says Jocilyn’s father, Rob. “When she was twelve, she shot a little 8-point.” With that first buck under her belt, Jocilyn resolved that the next buck she harvested would be bigger.
“We hunted together every chance we got,” says Rob. “The only days she missed were the second Tuesday and second Friday of rifle season. She passed up ten bucks in that time.”

“Most of them were spikes or four-points or small six-points,” adds Jocilyn. “I’d just told my dad I wanted to get one bigger than the year before.” So she kept waiting, and she kept letting the deer walk by.
Jocilyn tried to shoot a nice 8-point on the first day of rifle season, however. “We were sitting together in a Double Buddy tree stand. The deer stopped and she had her gun up,” Rob says. “When she went to pull the trigger I saw the gun jerk, but it didn’t go off. She’d forgotten to take it off safe.”
No problem, Jocilyn told her dad. The mistake happened for a reason. That reason showed up at twenty minutes to five on the last evening of rifle season.
“We’d heard about this buck since August,” Rob says. “I finally saw the deer on the second Tuesday of rifle season. It crossed the road after dark, between seven and eight o’clock. I saw it again Thursday night at about the same time. Then my brother-in-law said he saw the buck Wednesday morning at four thirty, going back into the area where I saw it come from.

“I told a few guys at work about seeing this buck. I was excited. I hardly knew them, so they probably thought I was exaggerating when I told them how big it was. Every night after seeing the buck, I drove up and down that road with my video camera, hoping to catch the deer on tape.”
As the end of deer season neared, the chances of harvesting the giant whitetail seemed to shrink. And then, on Friday of the second week, Rob headed out to his stand and killed an 8-point with an 18-inch spread.

“I thought I’d killed the big one,” says Rob. “I walked back to get the truck, and as I was driving out in to the field to load up my deer I saw another one standing in the field in the snow. I thought, ‘Oh man, he’s not dead. He’s still alive and he’s getting away!’ There was nothing I could do. The deer ran from the field and I saw he was huge. And I realized it wasn’t the buck I’d just shot.”
Jocilyn missed out on hunting that night due to the high school’s Snow Ball dance. But she wasn’t about to miss out on the last day of hunting season.
“The dance the night before was pretty fancy. She wore high heels and all that. When we went out the next morning, she still had her hair up in a bun. I told her, ‘Even if you don’t get a buck today, I think you’re the prettiest girl in the woods.’”

That Saturday morning and afternoon, two uncles and a cousin put on deer drives in search of the giant whitetail. They had shots at a couple bucks, but had yet to see the big one.
“Jocilyn passed up three more bucks that day,” says Rob. “One of them was a nice 10-point about a hundred and twenty yards away. I didn’t want her to shoot it, though, because she was using a Remington .25-20 with open sights. She’s great with that gun up to seventy-five yards. We were hunting very close to the West Virginia state line. I was afraid she’d shoot a deer and it would literally run to the next state.

“We were also hunting close to a highway. All day we’d hear cars blowing their horns on the highway and five minutes later a group of deer would come from that direction.”
Just before five o’clock, however, the big one showed up unannounced. It came from the opposite direction of the highway. Rob saw it first. The buck walked the edge of a hay field – 13 yards away.

“I told Jocilyn to get her gun ready. She said she couldn’t because the gun was leaning against a tree several feet away. We’d set it there earlier and she couldn’t reach it without the deer spotting our movement. We were sitting behind an old gas well, so when the deer crossed in front of us, Jocilyn grabbed the gun and had it ready when the buck appeared on the other side.”

When the buck did appear, Jocilyn squeezed the trigger. The deer ran only a few yards and dropped. It was time to celebrate.
“The deer never saw us,” says Rob. “It was incredible. Jocilyn didn’t even have time to get nervous, it happened so fast.”
Meanwhile, Jocilyn’s uncles, who’d been hunting all day for the buck, heard her shoot. “They thought there was no way we got that deer,” Rob says. “I went back to get the truck and looked over in their direction. I could see them at the edge of a field watching us through their binoculars. It was a neat experience.”
After Jocilyn shot the deer, Rob walked across the state line and saw the 10-point from earlier. The deer was standing with two does. “I think this buck came out early that evening,” says Rob, “because it smelled that 10-point with those does in heat over there. I guess the deer didn’t realize if he’d have just waited another hour or two he would’ve made it through the season.”

On the way home that night, Rob and Jocilyn stopped at a restaurant to grab a bite to eat. “We couldn’t even get a chance to order,” says Rob. “Folks kept coming in asking about the buck in the back of our truck and wanting to see it. We’d go out and show them and then more people would stop by wanting to see it. We never did make it back into the restaurant.”
“It was worse than a funeral home!” laughs Jocilyn.
A year later, both Rob and Jocilyn remain excited about this once-in-a-lifetime whitetail. “I told her,” Rob says, “that there’s a chance she’s killed the biggest buck she’ll ever see in the wild. So now she’s planning to bowhunt this year.”

“I just love getting out there and spending time with my dad,” Jocilyn says. “I like waiting for something to come by. And I like the anxiety and getting nervous when you see a deer.”
Jocilyn also likes proving the boys at school wrong. “None of them thought I’d actually shoot anything,” she says. “So, after I got this buck, I showed them the photos. They practically wet their pants!”