Mason Phillips is an 8th grader at Knoch Middle School. You may know his brother Gavin Phillips or cousins, Cole Reiser, Michael Phillips, and myself. He grew up hunting on his great grandfather’s 150 acre farm in Edinboro.

On November 25^th, Mason Phillips’ great grandfather, Paul, passed away after an ongoing battle with dementia. On November 30^th, Mason went hunting on the farm and shot a ten point buck that won the Crawford County PA buck pool for largest deer in the junior division. In his pocket was his great grandfather’s pocket watch.

The farm has been in his family for five generations, beginning with Mason’s great, great grandfather, Charles.

“It’s where he grew up and it has a special story behind it so it’s pretty cool to hunt there,” said Mason.

Paul was sixteen years old when his father, Charles, moved their family to the farm. The Great Depression had turned life into a bleak fight for survival; one in which hunting was more than a fun activity, but a necessity.

After Paul’s father passed away, he converted the garage into a cabin, marking the start of a transformation to turn the farm into a place where his family could come and enjoy themselves. Mason’s father, Josh, has been hunting on the farm for the last twenty years. It’s where Mason learned to hunt.

“{I usually hunt with} my dad, my grandpa, Gavin, and my Uncle Matt,” said Mason over the phone, his father chiming in periodically.

Paul himself hunted until he was eighty-two, passing on his knowledge to his great grandchildren.

“He taught me some tips {…} and we usually went out and hunted before he got too old to do it,” said Mason.

It was with these tips in mind that Mason headed into the woods surrounding the farm on the 30^th with his father. It wasn’t long before they noticed something big moving through the trees.

“I didn’t really know how big it was,” said Mason, about the deer. “My dad just told me how big it was. {…} I saw it through a little bunch of branches and I just pulled the trigger.”

He had taken down a ten point monster buck, and neither Mason nor his father could believe it; it was almost a miracle. Mason remembered the pocket watch in his coat.

“My grandma gave {it to me} on Thanksgiving because he (Paul) had passed away on Monday. It just felt special to me because I know my great grandma would have liked me to carry it when I was hunting,” said Mason.

“That’s what he took when he’d go out in the woods so he knew when to be back,” said Josh.

Mason says he could sense his great grandfather in the forest when he was on the farm that day.

“I just knew he was happy in heaven,” said Mason.