A young deer eyes a pile of pumpkins recently in Missoula, Mont. When autumn presents fine foliage and a bounty of pumpkins, it's also a good time to hit the woods for muzzleloader season in Pennsylvania.

A perfect autumn day was unfolding before me and I was eager to get out of my chore list for an afternoon.

It was the early muzzleloader season and one of the premium times of the year to be in Penn's Woods.

My brother-in-law called me earlier in the week and we planned to hunt deer with muzzleloader rifles on the season opener.

We weren't too pressured to get out at the crack of dawn, as this was more of a relaxed pace for both of us. There was a lot of deer hunting days before us and this was unusually early in the season for us to be on the hunting trail.

I decided to work on a scope mount for a friend who wanted to borrow my Remington 870 SPS slug gun.

Modern slug guns are extremely accurate, and with a Leupold scope, it would be a deadly combination to reckon with during the Ohio slug season. I bought that shotgun for New York hunting, but never really stayed with that plan for long.

I was finishing up when Roy showed up with his T/C Omega and a freshly tagged doe. He handed me the rifle and said, "It was reloaded after I shot my deer, so you might as well use it instead of fouling up another muzzleloader."

Roy generally has some pretty accurate hunting pieces, so I took his word that it was dead on and planned to use it for my afternoon hunt.

The day was gorgeous and the foliage was at its colorful peak. I planned to walk an old trail up to a stand of mature oaks and scout the area for mast production.

I gathered my hunting gear and looked over the muzzleloader. After all, it was a Thompson/Center, which is a very dependable manufacturer for black-powder rifles, and sitting atop the .50 caliber was an old friend — a Leupold scope.

The weather was in the 50s and sunshine brightened the woodlands as I headed for my stand. I watched the wind direction by observing swirling leaves and knew that I would have to hunt the north face and get above all the deer trails. Deer won't waste any time after getting a whiff of a human.

I found a tangle of logs and cleared out the leaf debris so that black humus was all I would be standing on. A good sign was that the ground had acorns littered about and there were signs of wildlife feeding activity.

I sat quietly for 90 minutes looking over potential trails when I heard some small-game hunter's shots in the next valley. I now knew that deer would be on the move.

My thoughts were interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a running deer. I watched the doe run toward me at an angle, but she never slowed down and slipped out of sight over the crest of the hill.

I knew I had one shot, and that this wasn't the one.

My sage decision soon paid off as I heard another deer coming from the same direction but on a slightly different angle. She crossed in front of me at about 75 yards and all I could do was hope for a clean shot.

The deer came closer and I pulled back the hammer of the muzzleloader and waited for a clear shot. The deer started to slip over the crest of the hill and I knew my chance for a shot was becoming very slim. I was ready but wouldn't take an irresponsible shot on any game. With me, it's either a clean shot or no shot at all.

It appeared I had no shot when the deer hesitated, finally giving me a clear shot.

It wasn't much, but I could take the neck shot. If I was true, the deer would be downed. If I faulted, the deer would escape.

I took aim and all the stars and planets must have been in alignment because the shot was true and the 2010 deer season began in style.