All in a day's work
SLIPPERY ROCK — Amanda Reynolds was feeling a bit left out.
Hunting with her two brothers and father on the family’s 50-acre horse farm in Slippery Rock on the first day of deer season Monday, she watched all three bag a buck in the span of a couple of hours.
Her father, Jimmy Dillaman, 56, got an 8-point buck at 8:50 a.m. Her brother Jesse James, 16, got a 3-point less than 30 minutes later.
At about 10 a.m., her brother Joshua, 27, got himself a 7-point.
“My husband (Curtis Reynolds) called me from Mercer around the time Josh got his deer to tell me he just got an 8-point,” Amanda said. “He was up there hunting with his dad.
“I figured mine was bound to come. Our family has never had a day like that.”
The Dillaman family had hunted together on the farm annually since 1988. As soon as someone in the family was old enough, he joined in the venture.
“Everyone has his or her own tree stand,” Dillaman, 56, said. “They only sit a few hundred yards apart. We can all see each other.”
They saw each other get their bucks on this day.
“All these years and we’ve never had more than two of us get a deer in the same hunting season, let alone on the same day,” Dillaman said. “This was family history here.”
The day was coming to an end as Amanda’s brothers and father headed back to the house. She remained in the woods looking for that elusive buck.
“They were teasing me a little bit, but they really wanted to see me get one,” she said. “They had tried driving a certain area, looking to flush some toward me, but there were none there.”
At about 4:45 p.m. — just before darkness began settling in — Amanda made the family’s day complete.
“An 8-point just appeared, heading in my direction,” she said. “The guys weren’t there to see it, but they heard my shot.
“I swear they were all back out there before that bullet even hit the deer. They helped me get it back to the house.”
Her 8-point buck had an 18 and a half inch spread, making it the biggest buck out of the five harvested by the family that day.
“I saved the best one for last,” Amanda said, laughing.
Dillaman could not believe his family’s good fortune.
“I doubt this will ever happen again,” he said. “I’ve been hunting since I was 12, when my father first took me. My kids, as soon as each turned 12, came out and hunted.
“This was really a cool day. Getting all lined up for a picture of all of us with our deer ... That was awesome.”
