At 104, the Oldest Living Hunter in America Seals the Deal on Another Successful Deer Season
OutdoorHub Reporters 12.22.17
Clyde Roberts has been hunting a long time – in fact, he’s believed to be the oldest living hunter in America today – and for the 2017 deer season, Roberts already has two does down. With meat already sitting in his freezer, Clyde climbs 20 feet back up into a treestand, this time focusing his sights on a bear.
Before we go any further, we should mention that Mr. Roberts just celebrated his 104th birthday back in October!
The thought that there’s somebody else out there older than Roberts who’s still hunting seems highly unlikely, but you never know . . .
What is certain though, is that the internet absolutely loves Clyde, and he’s become a huge star across hunting blogs, getting thousands of Facebook Likes for his hunting efforts.
Clyde’s son, Mike, reveals in an article by Tulsa World, that his father wasn’t always a hunter. He simply took it up as a hobby to pass time after retirement. At the age of 65, it would seem Clyde was getting a late start into this whole hunting thing. But nearly 40 years later, he seems to have gotten the hang of it.
Perhaps the best part about Mr. Robert’s hunting career, is that for decades he’s been reaping the benefits of a $5 lifetime hunting license he purchased from the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries upon his retirement.
“I suppose the state fish and game folks figured anyone retiring would not be around long enough for them to lose money. I have hunted and trapped on that $5 license for decades. Some years later that deal was discontinued,” Clyde reportedly said.
Last deer season, Clyde took the biggest buck of his life during an Election Day hunt with his granddaughter. It was a big-bodied buck that carried a wide-frame, 8-point rack on his head.
Most recently, while sitting up in a treestand with a 270 Win. cradled in his lap and his son by his side, the two were initially looking for a big bear . . .
But when a group of does ran into a field the father/son duo were looking over, Clyde caught a glimpse of something that got his attention.
“There’s a buck,” he whispered to his son, and Mike instinctively stopped the deer with a grunt call. His dad took care of the rest.
Squeezing the trigger, Clyde added another big 8-point buck to a growing list of deer (11) shot over the age of 100.
According to DGIF statistics, only 6 percent of the state’s deer hunters kill three deer in a single season. Only one is 104 years old.
