Bob Parker of Meridian has a collection of mounted trophies at his home that chronicle his lifetime of hunting.

BUTLER TWP — The boar head mounted in Bob Parker's trophy room is from Ohio. The Elk was shot from 350 yards away. The bear, harvested in Canada, has been around since the 1960s.

Each of Parker's many trophies has a story— a memory.

“It used to be important for me to get something,” he said of his lifelong passion for hunting and fishing. “Now, it doesn't matter. It's just about getting outdoors and making memories.”

There's not much that would stop Parker, 79, from joining his buddies and oldest son Brad Parker of Florida on the first day of deer rifle season Monday. They've already sighted their guns and picked their spots.

Parker already has harvested a deer with a muzzle loader since having a stroke two years ago. That would be somewhere around his 70th deer.

“He loves to hunt and fish and has spent his entire life doing just that,” Brad Parker said, as he and his father flipped through 60 years worth of hunting-related photo albums and handwritten trip diaries. Bob Parker also had one of the hunting experiences he wrote about published in “Pennsylvania Sportsman” magazine.

Parker, born in Kansas, first earned the nickname “The Beast” for his prowess playing high school football in Oklahoma. A four-year stay with the U.S. Marine Corps prompted his next move. Afterward, he was making his way across the country to Alaska when a catch of a different sort detained him.

“A blind date ... I was late because I went fishing first,” Parker said, noting the trip to a Butler County drive-in theater parleyed into a happy marriage of more than five decades.

After wedding, Parker got a job with ARMCO that he held for 37 years. The couple, that has six grandchildren and four great grandchildren, did eventually travel to Alaska years later on a vacation.

Parker also has hunted in Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas and Idaho.

British Columbia is home to Parker's “one that got away.” It was a 600-pound grizzly bear. “I took a shot but I missed,” he said.

In addition to mementos, Parker turns his hunts into meals including deer steaks and homemade jerky.

Parker's wife, Nancy, is a good sport about his love of hunting and fishing. Sometimes she goes along. Sometimes she shops.

She did give Bob the nod to transform an upstairs room in the house into a hunting trophy room after the couple remodeled, adding an extension onto the house, four years back. In the room are the many mounts and racks and photos of Parker smiling — some with the most beloved of his hunting dogs, a Brittany Spaniel named Max who died only months ago.

“Sometimes I just come up here and sit and look at the pictures,” Parker said, sighing. “They're all good memories.”