good stuff

     Looks like some of the guys want a post without "the argument" ' Totally agree -so I'll start off with a favorite hunting story'. Lets just keep this one for nice stuff with nobody jumping all over each other.
     I like to hunt bucks- yea, a young flathead for the table comes home now and again but I like to target bucks and dont care if I spend all season waiting one out. That means lots of preseason scouting and preparation but its a job I enjoy. Like to try and pick out a  particular deer if I can.
    Went two years after one nice guy I had only seen one time for a second or two but whos home range had a corner on a property I had permission to hunt. Found he seemed to leave for the rut and come back late season.
 Lots of long cold or wet days in Rifle and Muzzel trying for him.
   Day before the end of Muzzel a couple of years ago snuck up on him and 2 doe in their beds on a snowy day. At about 40 yds leaned on a tree and put the scope on him and let go .  --Only the cap went off and the croshairs had stayed dead on target--- he was everything I had hoped for old, big bodied and a wide heavy, low rack with many points.
  Well he looked at me and I looked at him then the three of them got up and hopped over the ridge---gone. Have never seen sign of him since.
   While he looked at me and left I chuckled out loud- Hey, it had all worked out perfectly - hunted all season- had a nice time- passed a time or two on other deer-no dragging--all that scouting and waiting had paid off with a great stalk---Perfect season.
   Its the hunting---not the killing.
   

I had just finished up finals at Lock Haven University in the fall of 92 semester. It was the last friday of Buck season. So Dad called and we made our final plans to head to camp to hunt the last saturday of buck and the first day of doe on Monday. Our camp was near Kane and as I left, one of my teammates (from Ridgeway) made a comment that I was crazy, there were 4800 homes without electricity due to the blizzard that was going on outside. I told him that we didn't have electric at camp anyway, so it was no big deal.

As I headed west on 80 to the Pennfield exit, the State Police were closing 80 behind me and when I arrived at the Pennfield Exit it was drifted shut. I got out of my 79 malibu hot rod and surveyed the situation. The state trooper got out with me and said the following.
"I never said this, but you don't have much choice, get off here or take a chance that we can make it to Clarion". I didn't have time to drive to clarion as there was well over a foot and a half of new snow on the ground already and what normally was a 2.5 hour drive had already taken 2 and I wasn't even half way there. I went for it and just when I assumed I was buried in that drift on the exit and would be found by an unsuspecting plow truck sometime later that weekend, I popped out of the drift and onto route 153. Three and a half hours later I was in Kane and met my dad and brothers.

Dad had a full size 85 Jimmy and when we arrived at the unmaintained road back in to our camp it was plowed shut already. We put the chains on all 4 tires and he said "Let me see if I can move in that stuff if I get in there".
We did get in and found that the snow was pushing up over the hood, so we had to use a spotlight to see on the way back in the 4 mile drive on that mountain road. Compounding the vision issues, was the snow covering the grill of the blazer and it began to over heat. We found out later that we had 47 inches of snow in places. But one thing we noticed on the way in was that the deer were using the logging roads almost exclusively because it was so hard for them to walk anywhere else. We arrived at camp at around 2:30 am.

The following morning Dad let us sleep in as I had been awake for almost 3 days completing finals. We ate breakfast and devised a plan. There were three main roads running along the bottom of the valley where our camp is. The one we drove in on, one about 400 yards up the side of the mountain, that runs parallel to the main one and an old narrow gauge railroad track that follows the creek in the bottom of the valley. Dad had already scored a nice 8 pt in archery, however my two younger brothers and I had not been so lucky. My brothers and I would each still hunt along one of these old trails. I decided to hunt the abandoned railroad track in the bottom. As I made the 1/2 mile walk to where I would cut down and begin my hunt, I noticed that the snow was deep enough that it was falling into the belly pocket of my hooded sweatshirt (I am about 6'3" if that gives you some idea of what we were walking in). As I approached the point where I would cut down to the creek, I saw some deer cross the road about 150 yards in front of me. I decided to pass where they had crossed and cut down where I originally planned as that old trail should bring me across thier tracks. When I made my way down the trail I was amazed at how the heavy snow in the trees had made hemlock branches that were previously out of browse range, suddenly available to the deer. At that moment I saw thier tracks and them at the same time. They were feeding on the drooping hemlock boughs. I leaned back to sit and steady my self and found that standing and sitting in the snow was only about a 3 inch difference. It was however more movement than they were willing to put up with. I got the scope on them just in time to see a rack trailing the other two deer as they struggled up the steep hillside in the snow.

I knew if I could stay on them without getting them mixed in with some other deer I had a good chance to take this buck. I started up the hillside and jumped them several times without getting a shot. The third time I caught them feeding again, but after scoping the two deer I could see, I found no horns. I watched them for about 5 minutes waiting for the buck to appear, but nothing. I pulled the gun down and that's when I saw him, about 100 yards below the two does on the hillside sneaking down and away. He stopped just before a spot where he would dissapear down over the hill again and all I could see in the scope was a patch of about 4 ribs and the very top of his head and antlers. At 110 yards offhand it was by far the most difficult shot this 22 year old had ever even thought about taking, but I also knew that in this snow that If I drew blood, I would get him. I took the shot at the softball size target and lost him as the snow in the surrounding trees fell from the concussion of my .308 blast. Surveying the scene I couldn't tell what happened and was getting very disheartened quickly, it was a tough shot. I walked out to where I thought he was and couldn't even find his tracks, I scoured the area and found nothing, but was fairly sure he headed downhill, so I decided to drop down to the logging road 75 yards below and pick up his trail where he crossed it at.

Finding no tracks crossing the logging road, I decided to cut back up into the woods to where I was when I shot at him. I made it about 20 yards and could see an antler sticking up out of the snow ahead of me....Sideways!

The buck had only gone about 10 yards from where I shot him and I had passed below him by about 15 yards when I first walked out to look.....

He was a 20" 10 point and until just a few years ago, the largest we ever shot out of our camp. I remember dragging in 4 feet of snow and when Dad came down to see "what the he** was going on down there", I buried the deer's head in the snow. He asked if it was a nice one and I responded "Scrubhead". I will never forget the look on his face when he pulled that deer's head out of the snow.....It was probably eerily similar to the one I had on my face last spring when my son shot his first spring turkey, but that is another story.

My uncle parked at the end of the road that saturday night and tobboganed his two daughters in for monday's doe hunt. He arrived for one heck of a party as we sat and listened to "Solid Gold Saturday Night" on an old car radio hooked up to a car battery that sat on the mantle of one of my favorite places in the world.

Good stuff fellas.

Although i love hunting and will give it up only when im thrown into the ground, and i love to read others stories, Im not all that sentimental about my past hunts or get really emotional, so that prevents me from being a very good writer im afraid.

Im sure one day i'll look back on all the things ive done and experiences had with family and friends, but these days im not much into reflecting on the past and more into "planning" future hunts and making more memories and looking towards the next season..be it spring gobbler, archery whatever.

My friends, family members and I have taken many game animals of various types here in Pa and other states, but just as importantly many many things that we've laughed about, jokes, mishaps, and great successes as well as some very low lows. I wouldnt even know where to start anyway. Id like to think I'll have plenty of time for reflection myself, when some of those i hunt with now are gone, and im towards the end of my hunting career myself.

Back in my late teens/early 20's when I used to visit my grandpap and we'd sit on the porch alot of summer evenings, me drinking a couple cold ones (which he'd half heartedly beeotch about lol), and he'd tell stories for hours of hunting and trapping from much different time... decades past... over a lifetime of nearly 90 years before he passed away. You could see the emotion as he relived it all. That was good stuff.

Interesting. How long have you been bow hunting and how many bucks have you shot in these urban areas around the burg ?

ORIGINAL: dpms

This is a article I wrote for Crossbow Magazine.  The story of my 2009 archery buck.  http://www.crossbowmagazine.com/gs-longest%20recovery.html

Father and son stories are some of my favorites, oh and daughters also.

ORIGINAL: Outdoor Adventures

Interesting. How long have you been bow hunting and how many bucks have you shot in these urban areas around the burg ?

Really been concentrating on the urban areas for the last 10 years.  Been bowhunting for about 25 years.  Have shot a quite a few does around Pittsburgh and 4 bucks recently there.  Hunt all over SW Pa.  Last years buck was from southern Washington County, though.