When Bob Schlemmer Jr. earned his first triple trophy in 1989, he never expected to replicate the feat.
But 31 years later, the Westmoreland County resident achieved the honor for a second time this hunting season, and the way he did it was much different than the first.
Schlemmer notched his first triple trophy by harvesting a buck during the fall archery season, a bear with his rifle and a gobbler the following year in the spring – which still fell under the same license period.
This year, however, it took Schlemmer less than three weeks to bag a bear, buck and turkey – and he did it all with his compound bow.
“I use a 2011 Hoyt, I don’t wear camouflage and I don’t have the latest, greatest when it comes to gear,” Schlemmer said. “I do pay strict attention to the wind direction and I put as much time in as I can, and I hunt everything with my bow.”
Schlemmer’s triple trophy quest this year began by accident – and luck. He was hunting deer on his own property on Nov. 6, not really thinking about the opportunity to harvest a bear. In fact, Schlemmer, 55, hadn’t even seen a bear in the area for nearly 25 years.
But that morning, as he sat in his treestand waiting for first light, Schlemmer’s day was about to take an eventful turn.
At dawn, Schlemmer heard something in the leaves nearby that sounded like a deer. The more he listened, however, the rustling resembled the sound of a raccoon scurrying across the forest floor.
“I’ve heard what raccoons sound like, and this sound was getting closer and louder and I was wondering why I could see this coon,” Schlemmer said. “Then, 40 yards away I saw a bear coming in.”
The bruin was approaching from behind Schlemmer’s stand, requiring him to turn around at full draw and prepare to shoot while facing backward. When the bear was within 25 yards, Schlemmer grunted to stop the animal and then released an arrow directly into its vitals.
“It ran 8 yards and piled up,” he said. “The excitement was unreal. I sat in the tree for 20 minutes, called my wife and son and they didn’t believe me.”
But after Game Warden Mike Papinchak checked the bear – a female with an estimated live weight of 268 pounds – there was no denying what Schlemmer accomplished.
And that’s when he started thinking about the triple trophy, and how it would be nice to achieve the feat with his bow.
Next up was a buck.
While Schlemmer already achieved the most difficult harvest of the triple trophy – a bear – bagging a buck is something that eluded him until the last day of the archery season on Nov. 20. It was a warm morning and nothing was morning, so Schlemmer decided he would leave at 9 a.m. to attend to work obligations.
But minutes before he was getting ready to climb out of his stand, a legal buck approached. Again, Schlemmer grunted and stopped the animal at 30 yards before releasing an arrow that appeared to be a perfect strike.
“He ran 60 yards and I saw him hook, but I couldn’t find the arrow or blood,” Schlemmer said.
After a short search, he found the buck and saw that the arrow penetrated both lungs. The reason for the lack of blood was the arrow entered the chest cavity, deflected off the opposite shoulder and exited just in front of the buck’s hindquarter.
“I never found a drop of blood from that deer, or my arrow,” Schlemmer said. “I never saw anything like that.”
With two out of three checked off the triple trophy list, Schlemmer set his sights on a turkey five days later on Nov. 25.
This time he was seated in a ground blind, listening to birds calling from the roost. Schlemmer sporadically made a few quiet yelps with his slate call, but it wasn’t until nearly two hours later that the birds approached.
“I saw about 10 coming from my left, and I shot the first turkey that came within range at 10 yards away,” he said. “She folded up immediately and I sat in the blind for a bit. I just couldn’t believe I did it, all with my bow.”
Schlemmer is no stranger to the bowhunting world. He works as an outfitter in Wyoming guiding archery antelope hunts, and has harvested three bears in Quebec with a compound bow.
But achieving the triple trophy in Pennsylvania – all within a three-week span with a compound bow – was something truly special for Schlemmer, who is the son of former PGC commissioner Bob Schlemmer.
“Doing this makes me realize how thankful I am to my dad for starting me in hunting years ago, and the game commission for giving us bowhunters more opportunities,” he said. “Years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to do this because the seasons wouldn’t have been opened like they are today.”
The game commission hasn’t maintained a triple trophy program for decades, but agency communications director Travis Lau said he knows of just one other instance where a hunter achieved the feat entirely with a bow in the same license year.
“Taking all three of Pennsylvania’s big-game species in the same license year is an admirable accomplishment with any lawful sporting arm, but especially with archery equipment, given the limited range bowhunters have, and the greater likelihood of getting busted by game during close encounters,” Lau said.
As far as his next hunting goal, Schlemmer isn’t sure what that will be. For now, he’s content to enjoy the significance of his second triple trophy and relive the memories.
“The bear was the highlight in both triple trophies, but this one was totally different in that I did it all with my bow, all on my property and happened to get the hardest one – the bear – out of the way first,” Schlemmer said. “It means a lot to me for so many reasons.”
- This story originally appeared in PA Outdoor News.
