A six-point buck was found shot dead along Egolf Road in Colerain Township, Bedford County, on the morning of Sunday, June 28, and Pennsylvania Game Commission wardens are still trying to figure out who pulled the trigger. Investigators recovered a suspected .22-caliber bullet from the deer's shoulder, and a neighbor reported being woken by the gunshot before spotting a black pickup truck idling near the carcass the following morning.
According to CBS Pittsburgh, the same neighbor saw the black pickup truck drive south on Egolf Road around 1:30 a.m., not long before the shot rang out. The Pennsylvania Game Commission says people inside that truck are believed to have shot the deer before leaving the carcass behind, and the agency is now asking anyone with information to come forward.
Why the Caliber and the Clock Matter
The recovered .22-caliber round is a red flag on its own. Under Pennsylvania hunting regulations, rimfire cartridges like the .22 LR are strictly illegal for taking big game such as white-tailed deer, which require manually operated centerfire firearms, according to the Keystone Shooting Center. Rimfire rounds simply lack the stopping power for deer and are meant to stay in the small-game world.
The 1:30 a.m. timing adds another layer of illegality. Pennsylvania's Game and Wildlife Code bars hunting big game at night, using artificial light to spotlight animals, or shooting from inside or within 25 yards of a vehicle on a public road, per Scaringi Law. Those violations carry serious summary or misdemeanor penalties on top of whatever charges stem from the illegal caliber itself.
A Familiar Pattern in Bedford County
This is not the first time Bedford County has dealt with nighttime, vehicle-based deer shootings. In July 2024, the Pennsylvania Game Commission charged three Bedford County men with dozens of felony, misdemeanor and summary counts after seven dead deer — three of them with severed heads — turned up along Messiah Church Road and Younts Road in Bedford Township, the Altoona Mirror reported at the time. Nearly a decade earlier, in November 2017, game wardens caught three Bedford County residents using a spotlight and a .22-caliber rifle to illegally shoot a buck at night, a case that ended in more than $7,000 in fines and revoked hunting privileges, according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission's own account.
Whoever shot this six-point buck also ran afoul of Pennsylvania's antler restrictions, which require adult hunters in most of the state — including Wildlife Management Unit 4A, where Bedford County sits — to target bucks with at least three points on one antler side, per eRegulations. Combined with the illegal caliber, the after-hours timing and the abandoned carcass, wardens are treating the case as a clear poaching violation rather than a hunting mishap.
New Legal Limits on Warden Searches
Any evidence-gathering near private property along Egolf Road now unfolds under a different legal landscape than it did even a year ago. On July 21, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Punxsutawney Hunting Club v. Pennsylvania Game Commission that state game wardens must generally obtain a search warrant before entering posted or marked private land, overturning decades of precedent under the open fields doctrine, according to the Sportsmen's Alliance. Hoodline previously covered that landmark ruling, which now shapes how wardens can move along private-land borders while chasing leads in cases like this one.
There's also a public health dimension to leaving a carcass behind. Bedford County falls within Chronic Wasting Disease Management Area 2, a zone that led Pennsylvania in CWD detections with 99 new positive cases in free-ranging deer in 2019 alone, per the Pennsylvania Game Commission. Uncollected, unmonitored carcasses in that zone complicate the state's efforts to track and contain the fatal wildlife disease.
How to Report a Tip
The Game Commission is directing anyone with information to Operation Game Thief, a silent-witness anti-poaching program that accepts tips by phone or online. The Pennsylvania Game Commission Central Dispatch hotline can be reached at 1-833-PGC-HUNT, while the separate Operation Game Thief hotline, 1-888-PGC-8001, operates 24/7 toll-free. The program pays informants up to $250 when their tip leads to a conviction, funded by an extra $500 penalty enhancement assessed on convicted big game poachers.
State game wardens are actively investigating the shooting, and the case adds to a string of wildlife-crime investigations the agency has pursued this year. Hoodline previously reported on a falcon shot down near a quarry, another case where investigators leaned on Operation Game Thief tips to identify a shooter. Pennsylvania's deer herd, estimated at roughly 1.5 million animals statewide as of 2024 and managed across more than 2.2 million acres of public hunting land, remains dependent on regulated hunting seasons — not roadside shootings in the middle of the night — as its primary population control, according to Deer Friendly.
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