Rachael Myers and Keri Roadman, both of Acme, joined thousands of other people on Black Friday to go shopping and take advantage of deals on merchandise.

The difference between these 30-something sisters and other shoppers is they bypassed the mall and department stores and were at a gun shop in New Alexandria in search of hunting supplies for the start of firearms deer season.

The annual event opened 30 minutes before sunrise Saturday morning and continues through Dec. 10, with the exception of Dec. 4.

“I come to buy here all the time,” Roadman said of her excursion to Bullseye Firearms Gun Vault on the eve of deer hunting season.

When Myers and Roadman take to the woods Saturday near their parents’ property and neighboring field in Acme, they will be among more than 600,000 hunters who will be drawn to the state’s woodlands over the next two weeks, according to Pennsylvania Game Commission estimates.

They will be in search of deer that are part of what the Game Commission characterizes as “a productive deer herd” that includes a high proportion of adult bucks. The game commission allows for a hunter to bag one antlered and one antlerless deer per hunting license year.

Gun shop owners and managers Friday said they have been doing brisk business this past week, leading up to the opening of deer season.

“People have been buying everything — boots, hunting clothes, brand-new scopes for their rifles,” said Keith Moore, manager of the Army-Navy Store in Latrobe.

“We’ve been seeing it all week,” Moore said.

Chris Nemcheck of Lancaster, who came back to his family’s Unity home for the holidays and hunting, was getting a new scope for his Savage .243 rifle at the Army-Navy store before he goes to hunt along Baggaley Ridge in Unity.

“People have been buying a little bit of everything. Our sale started last Saturday (Nov. 19), and we’ve been busy,” Nathan Carey said, taking a brief break between waiting on customers browsing ammo, guns and gear at his store, Bullseye Firearms, which previously was a bank.

“It’s been crazy. It’s been nonstop, elbow-to-elbow,” said Stefan Walter, a sales clerk at Bullseye Firearms.

One of those hunters who already had his gear and equipment for the season was Paul Sefchick of Scottdale, who was at his cabin Friday afternoon along Laurel Summit Road in Cook Township.

Sefchick was hanging hunting clothes from the cabin’s porch rafters, airing out the human scent in those clothes so as not to alert a deer to the presence of a person.

“We’ll be up early tomorrow morning,” Sefchick said, as he waited for friends to return to the cabin after searching the woods for deer tracks. His cabin will be home to a party of four hunters the next few days.

Hunters and gun shop owners had a mix of opinions about the Game Commission permitting the deer season to open on Saturday after Thanksgiving, rather than the traditional Monday after Thanksgiving, as it had been for decades until the state changed the opening date in 2019.

“It’s kind of nice. A lot of people are off Friday (after Thanksgiving), and that gives them two days” before having to take a day off from work to hunt, Moore said.

But Bullseye Firearms’ owner Carey said the change in the opening day has been bad for businesses that relied on that Monday start to the deer season. Holding off until Monday meant people could have their Thanksgiving meal, be around the family, then leave on Sunday.

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