Vern Evans
When fall arrives, the Roberts family disappears into the woods. Danny Roberts, a 37-year-old father of three from Titusville, Pennsylvania, is a self-employed logger who sets his own schedule. His daughters take turns leaving school to hunt with him, and on Oct. 25, it was his youngest’s turn.
“When hunting season comes around, we don’t work. We hunt,” says Roberts. “I never pressured any of them to get into it. It’s just when they were ready, they were ready. Jojo took to it at a young age, and is real interested. She’s always liked helping me cut up deer meat and bear meat. She’s just into everything about it, the whole process.”
Up until a few weeks ago, Jojo had had a run of bad luck with warm weather, slow days, and one miss with her crossbow. But that Friday the second-grader was elated to stretch her legs for a bear drive on state game land with her grandfather, her dad, and a dozen of his buddies.
“Me and Jo were on the hillside and they started pushing and we heard some gunshots,” says Roberts. Another youth hunter, 10-year-old David Spear, had shot his first bear. “We went over to help him look for blood and we looked and here came another bear out of the drive.”
An 185-pound boar dropped out of sight down a hill then came back up again and stopped at about 70 yards. Jojo was ready with her .243 clamped into a tripod. She squeezed the trigger and the bear ran out of sight. Roberts wasn’t initially sure if she’d made a good shot, but the bear made it only 60 yards. She’d hit the top of the heart and both lungs.
“She is one of the calmest people I know,” Roberts says of Jojo’s mindset during the shot. “I was shaking so bad and I looked at her and she’s just ready. I think it helps that me and her mother [Amy] work with them all summer long. They shoot, I dunno, 5,000 rounds of .22 a summer. They constantly have their .22s on the DeathGrip [tripods] so they know what they’re doing when the time comes to do it.”
Jojo, 7, says she simply “reacted” to the bear in front of her, and that while her legs got shaky and she started talking a mile a minute after the shot, her dad “is the shaky one.” The active participation of a bear drive — her first time attending one — also appealed to her.
“We weren’t just sitting there and just waiting,” says Jojo. “We had to move around so I could get a shot at my bear.”
Tagging a black bear is an accomplishment for any Pennsylvanian, let alone a youth hunter like Jojo: Fewer than 3 percent of Pennsylvania black bear hunters are successful each fall, according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission.
Roberts and three other hunters secured her bear to a game pole and hiked it a mile out of the woods.
“It took us forever, but I was cheering them on all the way,” says Jojo.
A few days later found Jojo and her dad on stand again, this time sitting in an elevated blind on private property waiting for a buck to appear.
“It was warm out that day and we didn’t see hardly anything,” says Roberts. “She was getting a little discouraged with [trying to tag a] buck but finally they got hot and they started running the does a little bit.”
The two hunted all day with just one break for lunch when, finally, a doe came trotting by at about 5:30 p.m. Jojo had a doe tag but she was determined to shoot a buck.
“I said, ‘Jo there’s something going on, she ain’t just running for nothing.’ About two minutes went by then here came the buck. He had his head lowered to the ground and came in. It was just a little 4-point but she was happy.”
Jojo made a great shot with her crossbow and while Roberts saw the deer crash, Jojo couldn’t. So when they climbed down, she picked up the blood trail and tracked it herself.
“She’s just always been into that kind of stuff, anything she can do to make the hunt more fun,” says Roberts. “I gut it for her and she holds it, anything I need. If I need her to hold a rib cage open she’ll reach in there and grab it. They always take some of the blood from the animal and put some under their eyes, kind of like warpaint. My oldest daughter started it, I don’t know how she [picked it up].”
Jojo examined her buck, astonished by all the frothy lung blood and the entrance and exit wounds.
“He’s huge!” she says in a video of the recovery. “Well not huge but — wow!”
Roberts recorded Jojo trailing and recovering her buck.
A few days later, the Roberts set up on a flock of turkeys they’d been seeing while deer hunting. After an all-day sit in a pop up blind, three longbeards finally marched through at 25 yards that afternoon. For the third time this season, Jojo calmly squeezed the trigger and neatly folded the first tom. This time she was shooting a TSS load through her .410, also clamped on a tripod.
“Her biggest strength is just paying attention to what’s going on around her. I told her the other day when we were sitting in the stand, ‘You’re my most patient hunter.’ My middle daughter [Amelia] is the quietest but Jojo, she’ll sit there all day long. We were out trying to get a turkey and I said, ‘It might not happen today Jo but we’re going to get you one.’ She said, ‘Dad I just took off school because I wanted to hang out with you.’ It’s fun hunting with them kids.”
Jojo’s bear will be made into a standing full-body mount and placed with other taxidermy in the family dining room. The eldest Roberts daughter, 12-year-old Milli, wants to be a taxidermist when she grows up, and plans to try mounting Jojo’s buck with guidance from a professional.
“That’s going to save me a lot of money,” jokes Roberts.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission commended Jojo for her “triple trophy”, a state tradition that involves tagging a bear, antlered deer, and wild turkey during the same license year. That accomplishment could turn into a Grand Slam if she tags a gobbler this spring. While Jojo still has doe tags to fill this fall, she and her dad agree that the bear hunt has been the highlight so far.
“The bear was her favorite because she’d never killed one before but the whole experience of all the guys coming up to her, congratulating her, giving her high fives,” Roberts says. “She hung out with my dad the whole four hours we were walking out with [the bear]. I think she really liked the camaraderie of it all.”
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