Outdoor Life reported last December that Ray Swingle achieved a deer hunting milestone that few people will live to top. At age 100, Swingle shot a Pennsylvania buck on the Union Dale area family farm with his old Winchester Model 70 Featherweight rifle in .30-06. This year, Swingle killed another PA buck, but this time with a crossbow the day after his 101st birthday.
“I didn’t think Ray could top last year’s deer hunting achievement — but he has,” Ray’s grandson-in-law Mike Mancuso tells Outdoor Life. “He was hunting alone the afternoon of Oct. 9 when he used his TenPoint Crossbow to take an 8-point buck at 30 yards. The buck had a 17-inch spread, weighed about 175 pounds, and we think it was a three-year old buck.”
The whitetail dropped in its tracks, as the arrow went through the buck’s neck and ribs, clipping the deer’s spine and anchoring it.
“Ray called me immediately, and I got to his wood-frame shooting hut [that he had handmade] soon thereafter. Then we loaded it up, took it back to the farmhouse and cleaned it.”
Mancuso says Ray tried hard to shoot a buck on his 101st birthday, which was on Oct. 8. But he never got a crack at an older buck that day. So, he opted to hunt again the next day to hopefully punch a tag.
“He passed smaller bucks because he knew there were better ones on the farm,” Mancuso says. “Getting a good buck the day after your 101st birthday is an incredible achievement. And he did it with a crossbow — while hunting alone.”
The buck Swingle arrowed was taken only about 50 yards from where he shot an 8-pointer last year when he was 100 years old.
Ray was born on the Susquehanna County dairy farm in 1923, and Mancuso says he still works on the farm doing a wide array of projects. Mancuso believes that the hard-working farm lifestyle keeps Ray fit, self-sufficient, and ready to hunt.
Mancuso says Ray bowhunted deer for 30 years, living through the evolution of recurve and compound bows. Swingle began using a crossbow when his shoulders could no longer handle the push-pull of drawing a standard bow.
While most of Swingle’s deer have been taken in his home state of Pennsylvania, as a younger man he had also traveled widely for hunting trips.
“He’s taken moose in Newfoundland, caribou in Quebec, elk and mule deer in Colorado, mountain goats in British Columbia, Dall sheep in the Yukon,” says Mancuso. “He shot his first deer at age 15 with a .22 rifle back in 1938, [when it was lawful to hunt deer in Pennsylvania with a .22].”
Ray often hunts with Mancuso or his grandchildren. But since he hunts almost daily during the Pennsylvania season, he often hunts alone, too.
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“He’s worked hard passing on outdoor traditions and takes his great grandson fishing on farm ponds.”
“There’s no doubt that Ray will be back next fall to try for another buck around his 102nd birthday — God willing.”
