A Week Hunting in Pennsylvania

By Ron Niles

I had been looking forward to this hunt in Pennsylvania for months. Making lists of what to bring and what I needed to still get. Going over that list time and time again and packing as the time to leave neared. I had spent time looking at aerial photos trying to get familiar with the areas we would be hunting.

I say we because I was going to be there with a couple friends, Al and Al, father and son. I refer to them as Big Al and Little Al which is a misnomer where as Big Al is smaller than Little AL. These guys have been going to Pa for 20 or so years and they knew the areas well. Even looking at the photos I still was pretty much lost as to where I was. Worse yet these deer weren’t, or didn’t behave like, the deer here in the big woods of New Hampshire. So I was a little lost figuring these critters out.

The first critter I saw was just a hundred yards from my house, a skunk walking down the road. So I made a right turn to get to the meeting point for the six plus hour drive. On the ride I saw bear and turkeys in Vermont, turkeys in New York, and turkeys and deer in Pa. For the week I saw in the neighborhood of 250 deer all totaled in Pa. I even saw a couple in the 120 class which I’m told is a real trophy for the area. Big Al, who is really the littlest Al, saw a buck in the 140 class.

The deer in this area of Pa were very much relating to the standing corn, which NH has little of, and to the green fields, also which NH has very little of. Along the way to and from the primary food sources, they would eat on the green brier, hickory nuts, and the acorns from the very few oaks that were there. Normally they are also in the apples but there was very few of them this year. The deer turned out to be pretty predictable, but never the less it wasn’t easy to get one in bow range, which is normally the case when hunting with archery equipment.

This was a freezer filling hunt for me so taking a couple does was written into the program. The buck, three points one side rule, a very good rule for there in Pa, turned out to be a little harder to do. Being new to the area and invited to hunt with Big Al and Little Al, I didn’t push where I would have liked to get in order to get that a chance at those bigger bucks. Being the so called October lull I know where I would have liked to have been. Tight to the thick cover or even right in it. I did some scouting with the guys, on a Sunday which there is no hunting on Sunday in Pa, a rule that should be changed, and found some terrain/habitat that was just right. I told Big Al that if he wasn’t going to hang a stand there I would. He did. He also saw a nice eight point, maybe even the 120ish eight I had seen after dark, but it also saw him. I hunt high for that very reason 25 feet or better. Al and Al hunt at about 12 feet. I think this is the main reason he was busted.
I paid attention to every deer I saw while going to and from hunting, the store, where ever. This allowed me to kind of get a rhythm of the deer and what they were doing at any particular time. When they were bedded and when they were up and feeding.

This allowed me to take the first baldy on the day before the last hunting day. They had been bedded early to mid morning so I figured they would be up and feeding early-mid afternoon. At 1:00 pm I headed to stand. At 2:15 pm I had to little ones come in and feed. They were around my stand for a few minutes and I kept waiting for the doe. She didn’t show by the time the 60 pounders started to leave so I figured I’d go ahead and take one. At 2:22 pm I drew back and loosed the arrow. It was a good hit. It went about 14 inches, straight down and was dead in less than a minute. The arrow went in right of the spine and out the brisket as it facing away ready to walk away. That was tag one.

The second tag I filled the following day, the last day of my trip. It was also the opening of Pa’s early muzzle loader hunt. At first light I saw something white coming my way but I knew it wasn’t a deer. I was afraid of what I thought it was. Turns out I was correct. A skunk was headed right for the tree I was in. It got to about 10 yards of my tree and went down a hole. At about 8:30 am two fawns came in with a nice doe following. With the fawns directly under the stand, I drew back and filled my final doe tag on the good doe. This arrow went right of the spine and out the breast bone. She went a little farther than the first deer I got. She went about 18 inches straight down and died even faster.

The last afternoon I sat the same tree in hopes of filling my last tag, a buck tag. A legal buck needs to have three points one side and this is the only place I had seen a legal buck while in the woods. So I got there early, about 2:30 pm. I saw a young doe come in and munch on some hickory nuts at about 4:00 pm then leave. Somewhere around 6:00 pm a gunshot about 150 yards up the hill, shall we just say startled me, and a nice doe and fawn came running in and stopped 25 yards from me. A couple minutes later, two more does and two more fawns walked down the hill within 30 yards to my right. They stopped under that same hickory tree. Then another fawn came down. They all milled around me with in shooting distance until dark. Then they all wandered off.

This ended my hunt in Pa. I climbed down, after dark, pulled that stand and the camera I had near by. Funny, I didn’t get a single picture of a deer with all the cameras I had out and with all the deer around. This was a learning experience in itself. Don’t trust the cameras to tell you all. I pulled the last cameras and stands the next day, loaded up the truck, and drove home.

Things I got out of this hunt beyond the deer meat for the freezer; One, the rules in Pa are working and producing better bucks and there are still tons of deer. QDM (quality deer management) works! Two, deer do behave differently in different parts of the country and different habitats. Three, and this never ceases to put me in a state of wonder, this is an absolutely beautiful country. There wasn’t a part of the trip that wasn’t just gorgeous.

If you haven’t driven this country, outside of your own area, do so. Be it for a hunt somewhere, to visit relatives, or just for a vacation, take a drive you won’t be disappointed.

It was a great week with good people, me taking my two deer, Little Al taking a nice doe. Al and Al are still there for another week as I write this hope they make out well.