(Fourth in a series on hunting whitetail deer in Pennsylvania)
WARREN, Pa. – I have to admit that I've been a little envious over the years as I've interviewed countless families hunting together.
Hunting really should be shared among family members, passed down to the next generation so the tradition continues and the family bonds grow stronger.
But I live out West, and most of my family lives back here in the East. One of the deciding factors for picking this area for a hunting camp – other than it being a reasonable price – was that it would be a great place for spring gobblers, a terrific summer retreat with the nearby Allegheny River and great for whitetail deer hunting in the winter.
It's also close enough for family members to meet up here or to use it a lot more than I can right now.
My brother-in-law, Dale Olmsted, and nephew, Denny Bambino, pulled into camp late Wednesday night. Since it was my dream to hunt, fish and enjoy the outdoors with family here, seeing them at my door Wednesday warmed my heart.
Both are blue-collar guys who live in the Albany, N.Y., area. Dale is a maintenance technician for Owens-Corning, and Dennis is a maintenance mechanic for a small company.
A few years back, these two hardly spent any time together, but in recent years they not only do some side jobs together, they also have rekindled an appreciation for the outdoors and hunting.
I'm proud to say I've advanced their reintroduction to hunting by getting them here and having them spend some time in deer camp.
As I'm typing this, they're sitting across the table going over a map for State Game Lands 29, a massive tract of land managed by the Pennsylvania Game Commission. Imagine, a state agency working for hunters and sportsmen by developing an area for wildlife inside the boundary of the federally owned Allegheny National Forest. What a concept.
We hunted there Thursday, but once again didn't see any bucks.
Denny, who learned his hunting skills from his father, a high school baseball teammate of mine at Johnstown High, is relearning the art of the hunt. His dad, Denny Sr., was one of the best I've ever been around. He's a complete woodsman, and Denny was well on his way to being that when his father and mother (my sister) divorced.
When my sister Sue married Dale, Denny and his sister, Brenda, were part of the package. Dale has been a great stepfather. It took Denny a while to warm up, but today they are good friends, and right here, hunting buddies.
Dale actually has a lot in common with Denny's father. Dale was a trapper for a water agency when he was younger. He ran water trap lines for mink, muskrat and beaver to prevent them from damaging the banks and for protecting water quality.
A true woodsman, also, it has been a joy watching the two of them try and figure out the puzzle that is deer hunting here.
I'm figuring that between the three of us, we'll get this figured out. We may not have a buck, but we'll darn sure figure this thing out by Saturday night.
As for Thursday, it was a great day of hunting, but no bullets were fired by us. We heard a few shots, but not nearly as many as previous days.
Denny and I hunted together as Dale split off into the woods behind the cabin. It was humid and drizzly when we started out, but it changed to sleet and snow later, and the temperature dropped into the mid-20s by dark. I've repeated this often in this series, but yes, more snow is forecast for Thursday night. So the brutal conditions that we face every day will only intensify.
Though the day didn't produce a buck on any of our hunts, Denny did chase out five does early, and he showed me a very promising spot he found while archery hunting in the fall.
I continue to be amazed at the big woods here. Standing on a snow-packed hillside and looking from the ridge into the deep creek basin below, I just know, judging by all the deer tracks leading into the creek, that the area is holding lots and lots of deer. But with the deep snow piled along the creek edges, it's impossible right now to get a big buck to join the hunting party.
So we continue to walk the oil lease roads, which are easier to negotiate because of the amount of foot and wheel traffic that has helped compress or melt the snow.
Denny actually did get a five-pointer Thursday, a five-point antler, half a rack, from a 10-point buck that obviously just dropped it. There actually was a spot of blood on it.
My neighbor Dan Murphy couldn't believe that the bucks already are dropping their antlers here. He said the varying temperatures – cold snaps followed by hotter days followed by another cold snap – sometimes make the antlers more brittle. I found a fresh spike antler from a little spike that's been hanging around camp, and now Denny found this monstrous half of a rack.
“I've never seen this buck,” Dan said, checking out the shed antler.
That means the big 12-pointer, the Big Boy Dan had been seeing, still may be in full rack and alive.
Knowing that, or at least believing that, gave us all hope that the big bucks are still here. A little worn for all the pressure, but they're here.
We plan to hunt hard again Friday, but really put in a strategic plan for Saturday, what locals call the second opening day.
Ed Zieralski: (619) 293-1225;
ed.zieralski@uniontrib.com
