BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Joe Cerasoli and his wife Mary Anne are about to go out for a drive.
“Going to his hunting spot,” Mary Anne said.
The two are heading to where Joe hit a milestone, bagging his 60th career buck on the first weekend of rifle season.
It’s on a friend’s property; they asked me not to say where.
“I always wait for deer to cross someplace through the middle here,” Joe said.
He’s been hunting the area since he was a teen. Now 91, he patiently waited for his latest kill while Mary Anne tried to stay warm in the car with a good book.
“So I took my gun up… and I waited until the deer came into my crosshairs. Squeezed the trigger,” Joe said.
“I heard the bang and I got excited!” Mary Anne said.
“It ran off to the left where I couldn’t see,” Joe said.
“So out to the field we went, and there it was,” Mary Anne said.
“When I finally knew I had it, I was walking a foot off the ground. I was so happy,” Joe said.
He shot an eight-pointer– his third-biggest haul.
“Yeah, it was a way of life for a long time,” Joe said.
His first was when he was a teen. In those early days, it wasn’t just a sport but also a way of putting food on the table.
“I never looked for the biggest one; I always shot the first one because that put meat in the freezer,” he said.
Right out of high school Joe started working in the granite industry.
“A dollar an hour, 40 dollars a week,” Joe recalled.
With time, the pay increased along with his trophies.
“I don’t think I had any friends that didn’t hunt,” he said.
But what was a Vermont tradition is now controversial to some.
“We call it harvesting because the antis don’t want to hear about the bloody sport,” Joe said.
“We had an agreement when we got married,” Mary Anne said. “I had to agree that he would do anything I wanted during nonhunting season, but hunting season, was hunting season.”
Both previously widowed, Joe and Mary Anne have been married for 30 years.
“A man gets lucky twice in his life. Two good wives,” Joe said.
But there is sadness. Joe is about to hand over his Ruger Model 77-R rifle to his great-grandson. With multiple bouts of cancer and other ailments, the two have decided the 2024 hunting season will be his last.
Reporter Joe Carroll: You’re going to miss this aren’t you?
Joe Cerasoli: Yeah. I have to admit.
Joe Carroll: No change you’re not going to come back next year?
Joe Cerasoli: No.
Joe Carroll: But you have all these memories.
Joe Cerasoli: I have all these memories; you can’t take that away from me.