TO PINE CREEK CANYON COUNTRY PA
FOR THE OPENING DAY OF PA DEER SEASON,
AND THE PACKING BACK TO MD
OF THE BIGGEST TROPHY OF OUR PA HUNTS
And, now, the pictures will tell the tale! The Big Buck of Pine Creek Canyon has emigrated, and is now in Jim’s Custom Cutting in Eastern Shore Maryland, with his wall-hanging rack on its way to Parker’s Taxidermy!
We left on our full day of travel from Maryland’s Eastern Shore to the furthest Northern County of PA right under the Central New York State line in Tioga County, home of Pine Creek Canyon, and Don King’s cabin. I have hunted there with Don for over a decade, and in the latter two years, had brought Craig along with me, and last year was the first miss, since Don was so sick following his chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant from the small bowel lymphoma he had resected In Hilton head on his way to the annual hog hunt in Cumberland Island coming up three years back. The last time I had hunted there with Don, he was so weak and tired that he came back on opening day to take a nap at the cabin—and that is when I insisted he get the full workup. He did, and it revealed nothing but anemia and he was transfused. When he was enroute to Cumberland the next month, he had another very significant GI Bleed and got as far as Hilton Head, where I kept in touch with his doctors and visited him in the hospital right t the time they resected the midgut mass they finally found on CT scan which had never shown up on upper or lower GI endoscopy or barium studies. Now, Don is at home in bed to chair bedrest, but, with his dominant positive attitude, he insists he is getting better, just as he did when he had had a stroke, from which no one thought he might recover, from which he has almost no residual.
So, our first goal was to leave MD by a more interesting way than straight up Rte 13 through stripmall and industrial Delaware, which has been my route to 41 and 30 to 283 to 15 to Wellsboro PA these last many trips. We drove up 301, 313, 213, into Cecil County—one of the MD counties I had never been in before on the northern tier of the Eastern Shore and cut by the C & D canal. We went through towns like Galena, Oxford, and Georgetown, MD, crossing the Bohemia, Sassafras, and Elk Rivers (upper arms of the Chesapeake Bay) and crossed the tall bridge over the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal near the C& D Canal Museum, on our way north to Gap, PA where we enter Lancaster County and drive north around Hershey and Harrisburg, dodging Amish buggies.
Along the way, we had great wildlife sightings. We passed a field, which was white right up to the road with perhaps 75,000 snowgeese, as close as a few feet from the road and dense as a school of minnows. Some of the individual geese within this mass, which moved like a single organism, were the blue phase called Blue Geese. High overhead wheeled two mature bald eagles. We had seen two in a tree while hunting the day before and stopped to take a picture of them—there has been a 9-fold increase in nesting pairs of bald eagles in the Chesapeake area so that it is a bit of a small joke to call them “endangered” like the phrase applied to the next birds we saw by the thousands—Canada geese. They are so common now that they are reverting back to the status of any other carrion feeder—like what I lovingly call gulls—“Dump Ducks.”
VISIT DON KING IN MOUNT JOY, PA
Don was in bed, as always, in good spirits, realistic but optimistic. He could sit in a chair for most of our visit, a reflection of his getting stronger, since a week ago he could not do that much. He has lost about sixty pounds after 43 complete courses of chemotherapy—and he is still looking forward to enough improvement that he might be able to go hog hunting in Cumberland in January. And if I can help him, he will—but we will let that be his call—as was this missed opening day of PA’s deer season the second in his life, since last year he did not get out either. We chatted for a while and talked a bit with his daughter Karen who was visiting, and then joined Keith Bair, ex-son-in-law, and as close to permanent family as any of us could hope for. I told him we would do whatever we could to score for him and he would have to consider that we were hunting in his place for him.
I drove Craig’s GMC high performance pickup truck with all the fancy stuff that continuous all-wheel drive and extra woofers and tweeters makes possible. It helped me in a two-fold excursion of interest this week---while others were out for the ”Shop till you Drop” on Black Friday---I did no such thing. I looked at horse farms, and trucks—I believe the latter to be almost within my range, and I will be rather fussy about just what kind I have since it is a very easy riding vehicle if you get the right one, that can haul most anything—but a mis-match by any other casual purchase. Craig’s is a good one, and nearly ideal for this hunting trip.
As I drove higher, there began to be seen snow along the road, and above Williamsport, it began to get colder and snowier. When I entered the mountains at about the point where I had seen the three bears crossing my path on the inbound trip about four trips ago, it got dicey. We elected to go straight to the Antlers—our traditional feast the night before opening day.
As though I have not had enough big meals around our Thanksgiving feast, we did it again at Antlers where the crowd was noticeably bigger than last year’s sparse numbers—said then to be a reflection of the decrease in hunters in this most sacred of PA rituals of male bonding. But there has been a big change this year. Instead of a separate doe season at the end of the two weeks buck season, they gave out doe permits for the entire period if you were drawn for them. But, much more important—not any buck can be shot officially. Spike and forkhorns are off limits, and only big mature bucks are legal, reflected in the fact that they would have at least three points on one side---so, in essence, only six point bucks can be shot---a determination that cannot always be easily made in an instant---as I did not on opening morning. This means, rather than just shooting deer---as we can in Maryland (a second deer MUST be antlerless), and as I had practiced it in PA—just shooting bucks---now it is in essence a trophy hunt. How likely is a big buck going to come along? For most of us—once in a lifetime---and mine is still at North American Taxidermy awaiting the third cape I had brought in for remounting since my “Phantom of the Derwood Deer Woods” requires a 22 inch neck cape—a monster buck—and the hair slipped because of their errors in tanning the big buck I got in Derwood. I have got a good big mountain buck in PA about every other year I had hunted there, with my last one being the 385 yard shot across the filed form the rock pile that in the instant I glimpsed it caught the biggest buck I had got there—a 9 point buck with a big body—who disappeared into the woods as I heard him crash through trees into Pine Creek Canyon. I went over to pick him up with Don and the garden tractor and cart—my last of four good bucks I had shot in PA, about one every other year, with opportunity to have got a few smaller ones and scores of does, for which I never applied.
And, now, opening morning in the cabin: I tried to stay in longer, since I was awake very early. I got up and dressed in layers, including the new red wool coat that is a classic given to me by Bill Webster. As soon as I stepped out on the porch with rifle in hand to make my way down to the Rock Pile almost approaching six thirty- we heard a big body move out in front of me. As I accommodated the dark under the pines in the woods as I approached the Rock Pile, I spotted two things---a big brown body—and I could not see its head—and two orange caps---a father and son team from the Hazeltons—the local farmer, who were standing together at the point ten feet left of the Rock pile—my traditional perch. As I made two more steps forward, I pushed the big body right out over them, and two shots rang out—the first we were to hear of a good many more on opening morning.
When I got to the Rock Pile, they tried to do their best not to see me despite the fact that I was sitting ten feet from them, and even managed a friendly wave. They paced for a while, partly because it was cold, and then a half hour later, they stood out and talked—with the young one sent back to the barn to get the pickup truck and the older one walking across to the splotch I could see on the snow, and then he walked to the far side of the field and dragged a big body out of the brush onto the filed, where he proceeded to dress out a buck that I could see through the Zeiss glasses was an eight point buck.
He stood guard over it, pulling it away from me, but looking nervously over his shoulder at the Nielsons’ barn—owned by a fellow who is not too “hunter friendly.” I gathered that he figured I was a hunter and would give no trouble, but he had pulled the buck back from Nielson’s land, although it had been flushed from Don King’s pines into the Hazelton’s field. They drove the truck down, loaded the buck on the tailgate, and as furtively as thought I could not see them only a few feet from me as they drove back four-wheeling through the snow, they diverted their eyes, until I yelled “Congrats! Is that the big buck I have heard lives out here?” Back came only one phrase: “Eight Point!”
OK. That means that the really big buck that dominates this corner of the ideal deer’s world is still here, even if I drove a big buck right into them, there is another still out here!
I stood my post watching carefully trying to get some warmth and feeling back into my feet. It was cold, but not yet windy. I stomped over to the corner where they had stood just to exercise the feet that had been putting me through some big time exertions in the last weeks—when I had eaten less and exercised a lot, compared to this week when I had been eating enormous amounts and mostly standing on watch. As soon as I got to the tree at the corner, three deer came running the full length of the field heading down the “funnel” into the vast Pine Creek Canyon. I raised the rifle and swung on each of the deer. The first was clearly a doe, as was the second. The third had a rack and I looked at it as carefully as one can with a ten power Leupold on a running buck and saw what I thought were two points on the right side---a fourpoint illegal buck. I dropped the rifle as the deer ran all the way across the field. The last one paused as I raised the Zeiss glasses instead of the rifle and saw through their better resolution that it was a six-point basket rack---legal buck. I quickly swapped for the rifle and the buck was gone. Was this my muffed chance for what may be the last buck I might see on what realistically is the last time I might ever be at dear old Don king’s cabin?
Craig had gone back from the edge of the property to warm up briefly and while there, Keith had left the upper corner, probably the most productive place on the property, since one can see deer running across a filed from one woods to another, or straight down the open filed to where I had just seen the three deer disappear into the Canyon. I walked into Keith who wanted to go down to the Rock pile, and I stood over in the corner wondering where Craig had gone. Far across a road about a mile away, I heard a barrage of shooting beyond the Hazelton’s barn, and I saw six orange clad guys gutting and towing a deer across the filed that looked through the Zeiss like a doe. I put the glasses down and picked up the Browning .270 rifle in gloved hands and mounted it tightly for warmth against the shivering to look through the scope at the far edge of the woods where my first big buck had run out of “Sherman’s woods” adjacent to Don’s pines where I had dropped him on the run in1993 in the middle of the field with a single spine shot. I knew that at least Keith Bair was behind me at the Rock pile if anything ran the length of the field. But, where was Craig? He had never yet had a shot at a big buck here!
My gloved finger was through the trigger guard in holding the rifle when the first deer bounded out. It was a doe, I could see, and running fast, from the far woods where all the barrage of shooting had occurred. I did not have my eye to the scope since I did not plan to shoot but wanted to see if anything would be following her. Sure enough, here came a second doe, also on the run---toward me. I waited and put my eye down to the scope when he burst out.
No need to try to count points here! “Oh, my!” I sighed aloud. And what can I do about a huge buck running like a bounding ball straight across from me at full tilt? If you don’t know what to do, do what you know how to do! I swung with him and the whole field of the scope filled with the red siding of the Hazeltons’s barn. I am sure they would not appreciate my shooting a buck running across their field and then especially if it put holes in their dairy barn. I let the buck run, and so now he was farther out at about 250 yards. I swung again and slowed to touch off when I reached him. Snow jumped behind him about 20 feet back. I bolted in a second bullet, and swung fast since he was now running a lot faster, and I got ahead of him and touched off. Snow flew up about five feet in front of him. I could see his big wide 10 point rack held evenly as he bounded along with a thick chest and heavy neck. I concentrated on that as I cranked in another, and at this shot, I saw hair fly like a halo in the slanting sun, and he swerved. He straightened out and was almost at the corner that screens my view from the middle of the field where he was headed in high gear. This time, no more calculation—I fired right at him, and he seemed stunned and shook his head—and then held it high and bounded fast out of sight down the middle of the field. I turned to cross my fingers, since I know that Keith was on the Rock pile and on high alert—and that he know I would not be shooting four times at a spike buck.
One second later---too soon for even the fast fleeting buck to arrive at the Rock Pile, I hear a single shot and an even louder, thunk!
My first thought was “Oh, no!” I have just driven a second big buck, bigger far than the first, right into the gang of hunters that Hazleton had brought out to surround the field early this morning—but I had seen half of them dressing and dragging that deer half a mile in the other direction. Now, I was excited, and said—then “WE GOT ‘IM!” I saw Bruce coming out of the cabin, and I told him to come out to the corner and cover it, while I ran down to the Rock Pile to help Keith, since we may have something to retrieve from the open field. As I hotfooted (now, literally!) down the pines to get to the Rock pile, I heard a call that sounded like my name. I jumped over the downed brush piles pass the vulgar cussing “No Trespassing “ signs and saw a camouflage-clad figure in the middle of the field with only one small dot of orange—his hat—standing over a large body. Oh, oh. Before I go out charging across a field for which I do not have permission to investigate this, I had better check; I take out the Zeiss binoculars while I am still in the tree cover and check out who the figure is---it is Craig!
I hustled out there pulling out cameras, and trying to get there before anyone else does. Keith came up from the corner, and that is when I called out to Craig “Is he Ten?” “Yep!”
As quickly as possible, I took a few pictures, and when Keith arrived, we tried to drag the heavy body back to Don’s woods. Before we were across the filed, a black Suburban had pulled up on the far side of the filed and had a number of guys in orange checking us out. Craig and I dragged the buck out of the field and into the woods, where we could not drag him through the brush, as Keith went for the wheelbarrow. As we stood, and I pinned Keith’s license on the rack, four fellows came across the filed and said to me, “Let’s see what you have got there!” I said “And we would be proud to show you. Too!”
The first fellow with grey hair and a ponytail like an aging flower child, said as he came to me “The name is Nielson”. I introduced him to Craig and a group of young guys in orange that had come with him. He had a Sony digital camera and wanted to take our picture with the deer, and said you won’t see one like that in your lifetime again.” This is all coming form the fellow who brought in the firetower as a tourist attraction and wants to build casinos when legalized gambling comes in, and is in the process of building a miniature golf course on the elderly farmer’s land whom he petered until he sold I to him in an aggrandizement of all the land around here except Don King’s and the Hazleton farm, from both of who he is in a hostile standoff. “Where are you guys from?” Etc. By that time Keith had come with the wheelbarrow and after a hesitation he said, "From Pennsburg, where I just moved." “Why that’s where I live.” Keith did not say, “I know, I know.” He had already established that Craig was from Eastern MD and I from Western Shore MD and we had hunted MD opening day. He measured the 22 inch spread of the rack, and talked with his accompanying younger folk, before they left to their Suburban—after I had detailed in great precision, just where the deer had come out (from Don’s property) and where he was first hit (on Hazelton’s field) and where he had fallen (100 yards short of Nielson’s property.) I did NOT detail the status of Don's current health or his immediate whereabouts. He said he knew Don King had built a shooting blind on the side of the field that borders his property (I already knew that Don had said someone had but he did not know who—and it was never used while we were here), and I said “Yes, we hunt with Don from his cabin here, and Keith is his son in law.” So, I think the second group (that had intimidated the first, when the Hazeltons had gingerly retrieved the eight point buck from Nielsons’ property) had come to make trouble, and with a lot of careful obfuscation, I believe we successfully played the Bonhomie of Fellow Hunters, so that there was nothing that could be done against us for the legal harvest of a legal buck on private property not under their control.
Three years ago, Keith shot a buck that fell and then spurted a blood trail over Nielsons property, and upon arrival on the track, a caretaker came to intercept Keith, who, with Don, showed them the blood trail, and said they were just on their way to pick up the deer that had been shot on Don’s property and had run to fall on Nielsons’---a phone call was made to proceed the minimal distance to pick it up, and permission was refused.
With this kind of careful balance of claims in that air, I said to Craig—I am ever so glad that we have been lucky to be carrying out legitimate hunts on private land with permissions rather than getting involved in the enfilade fire of armed platoons on public land (such as the Pine Creek Canyon and the Sate park all around us) or the defensive landowners’ counterclaims of trespassing with hostile intent in close quarters. The Nielsons’ had not wanted the deer that Keith shot; they had just wanted to refuse him entry to their land since not everything Nielson is doing bears scrutiny. Oh, well, we had survived this contest, and the big buck did not, and now he was in the wheelbarrow which I had pushed while Craig on one side and Keith on the other steered the flopping wall-hanger head over to the meat pole where we winched him into position for more photos and dressing. It was now 11:45 AM on opening day in PA, and we were, triumphantly, successful. I shot lots of pictures for Don to be sure he got a big piece of this action, and that it was his deer we collected for him---and the best I have ever seen to get a shot at at least. Six pints on one side (double brow tines) and four on the other with nine inch spikes off a twenty two inch spread--—am trying to convince Craig this one is for the taxidermist. We are at least starting out that way with the cape being saved, and either this one or another from Jim the Custom Cutter will be on the Phantom of the Derwood Deer Woods if Craig only can keep the antlers, due to any domestic restrictions on his choices (like “don’t bring any of your pets home.”) This, I thought, is even more reason that we have to get our own cabin A-frame in the woods a bit closer to each of us, so we have enough wall space in a very masculine environment without fruh-fruh curtains, and nearly all Sportsman’s’ Guide décor, for us to raise dogs, shoot ducks, and salt block deer---after all, look what Don King has been able to preserve---which we enjoyed for him!
I spent the whole day in the cold, as the snow began to fall. I saw a couple more does—not nearly as many as I do usually see—perhaps because the Hazleton gang is shooting at them too. At one point, Craig went to the same place in the brush, and three of the guys stood out in the middle of the filed---very obvious in their blaze orange on a spaced open field intercept line right in front of them, while Keith made a quiet push through the woods behind us. When they got too cold to stand they walked back over and had a few words with Craig---ostensibly to tell him he had an inadequate amount of blaze orange showing, but, then immediately to ask: “Did you see a big buck out here?” “What? Oh, I heard there is a big one around here!”
Yes. Hanging frozen in the 6* temperature on our meat pole between two pickup trucks and the cabin, out of sight---but I can assure you, not out of mind