We can’t help but make reference to The Old Man and the Sea, when singing the praises today of Ben Cypher.

The 84-year-old Saxonburg resident has been hunting his entire life. “I was born in 1934 and my dad took me up to camp when I was a baby,” Cypher tells Butler Eagle Sports Editor John Enrietto in today’s edition. The Korean War veteran has harvested some 30 deer over the decades, he says. That’s a lot of venison on the table, not to mention a lot of bragging rights.

But his most recent deer might kindle the greatest boasts of all.

Now hobbled by two bad hips and a hairline fracture in his knee, Cypher hunts with a walker. He has a disability license that allows him to shoot from his pickup truck — but oh, boy, he still can shoot.

Hunting last week with his sons in Cameron County, Cypher bagged a trophy buck most hunters only dream of — an 18-pointer.

You can read Cypher’s remarkable story in today’s sports section. It’s no less remarkable than the story Ernest Hemingway wrote in 1952 about an aging Cuban fisherman locked in battle with a massive marlin. For that story — the last novel Hemingway ever published — he was awarded the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. A year later he won the Nobel Prize for literature.

It’s the struggle that inspires joy. It’s why some people choose to keep engaging in the struggle years after others have retired from it. There are likely hundreds, even thousands of Ben Cyphers in the woods of Pennsylvania stubbornly hunting because it’s what they love to do.

While it’s unlikely there will be any Pulitzer Prizes awarded, the Butler Eagle is proud and pleased to share Ben’s story with his friends and neighbors. It’s a truly remarkable feat — not to mention a trophy buck that any hunter would be proud to claim. It is being measured for the Boone & Crocket record book.

Congratulations again to Ben, his wife Mary Lou and their sons, who helped their dad spot the trophy buck and get him into position for the shot. They now have a story to tell that won’t fade anytime soon. And so do the rest of us.

And to all the others: keep hunting. Your 18-point trophy could be just over the next rise or in the next clearing.