A buck. A black bear. A gobbler. All in one Pennsylvania license year, the Triple Trophy, an award the Game Commission calls a lifetime achievement.
Faith Roth is 23. She took all three with a bow.
She grew up hunting with her dad and brother, a few does and a buck with a gun as a kid, then stepped away through high school. Two years ago, she came back and decided that this time she'd do it with a bow. The first two seasons were, in her words, "very disheartening." That's how bowhunting usually goes. Then this year broke open all at once.
The buck - October, Chester County.
Public land in 5C. Third evening out, warm enough for a t-shirt. He came through inside the first hour and gave her a broadside shot. She was ready to climb down and go look; her dad wanted to sit it out in case another stepped clear, so she stayed. First buck with a bow. Clean.
The bear - Sullivan County.
This one was nearly an accident. They bought bear tags on a whim, twenty dollars, low hopes, why not. Her dad had taken bears in Canada but never one in the States. They're members at a cabin up in Sullivan County and had seen good bears there the year before. Scouting, they cut across what Faith called "a yellow brick road of bear sign" and moved their climbers onto it.
Thirty minutes after they set up, a bear walked in, following their own trail through the timber, looping the same trees they'd circled hunting for a spot to hang. Fifteen yards. He stepped behind a trunk; she drew and held, waiting for him to clear it. "I felt like I was drawn back for probably a good two minutes. It felt like two hours." Deep breath. Good bow, comfortable. When he took his two steps, she shot.
Her dad was in a climber in the next tree. They actually called each other from their stands, half an hour in, both saying some version of there's no way that just happened. Then the rain came. They'd slipped back to the cabin to change and grab food; by the time they returned it was pouring, and they hurried out to a blood trail that ran nothing like a deer’s, a bear zigzags, loops, doubles back on itself. An hour and a half of tracking in the downpour. They'd marked first blood with a lighted nock, and when they finally stood over him, they were about twenty yards from that marker, though it had felt like miles. Recovered.
The turkey - spring, opening day.
First one with a bow. This was the nervous one. She'd killed turkeys before, always with a gun, and after the buck and the bear she wanted to play the last one safe, “there's plenty of years to go for firsts." Her dad wouldn't let her. A turkey doesn't give you the clean triangle a deer or bear does; you can take one from behind, from the side, head on. So, she put in weeks on shot placement, getting more nervous as opening day closed in. They were ready to burn two weeks of work if that's what it took.
The plan was the simple one, a rear shot, dead center, the kind you can't miss. They set a gobbler decoy facing away so the tom would square up with his back to them. He came in responsive, her dad purring on a mouth call, and lined up exactly the way they'd drawn it up. She drew, settled, shot, and put the arrow through the decoy. The tom went right back to thrashing it with her arrow sticking out of its backside. Her dad: "What the hell are you doing? Knock another arrow." She nocked a second, waited for broadside, and that one connected. Down.
Her dad's summary of the morning: "You shot my decoy."
Same head on all three: the 100-grain, 2-inch #207, the one a lot of hunters call the Mean Green, off a bow at about 55 pounds. A whitetail on public dirt, a bear at fifteen yards in the rain, a gobbler on opening day. Three animals built nothing alike, at whatever range each one gave her, each one recovered. That's the job.
"We really like that one" is about all Faith will say about the head. In her note to us she called the #207 "one of the key pieces of this accomplishment." We'll take that.
Her full story runs in Pennsylvania Game News this fall.
The #207 is a 100-grain, 2-inch mechanical, made in the USA. It now also comes in a Blade-Lock version the #307, the same head, blades locked to practice, unlocked to hunt.