Posts Tagged → deer
Flintlock season recap
- Gunmaker Mark Wheland with the gun of my dreams, a flintlock English Sporting Rifle made just for me
Writing a blog is a delicate walk, because as much as I want to write about the righteous boss daddy treatment President Trump gave to weasel rat dictator Zelensky the other day, I have to stay focused on what our audience of exactly One Person has requested. If I turn off my one reader, then I will literally be writing solely for the air and the stars.
For the record, just because you or I call Zelensky (Ukraine) the weasel rat dictator he is, does not mean that you or I automatically like or support dictator Putin (Russia). Both of these men are in power because they have subverted their nations’ elections, amassed wealth and power at the expense of their countrymen, etc. Yes, Putin is responsible for the war in Ukraine, and yes, Ukraine can and should negotiate a settlement that ends the bloodshed. And yes, Trump should demand and expect to receive rare earth metals in return for all of the taxpayer support Americans have given to Ukraine. This is all normal.
Wanting the war to go on and on with greater bloodshed and destruction on both sides and with more powerful rockets is not normal. That is warmongering.
Anyhow, the late hunting season here in Central Pennsylvania was exciting, but had no filled tags. I used to rabbit hunt a lot, but gave up when the rabbit populations showed signs of vaporizing due to abundant fishers and bobcats. For five or six years now I have hardly seen one rabbit in places where I have created the best habitat, and where rabbits should be swarming. So for many years I have just hunted the late flintlock season for deer, instead, just about daily.
And also trapped for predators, including fishers and bobcats. Not this season, however. On the December flight back from Florida, a man behind me kept coughing and sneezing. He never covered his mouth, and made no attempt to keep from infecting everyone around him. Sure enough, a week later I was showing signs of the same horrible illness half the country has now had, a persistent dry cough and a close brush with pneumonia. Lots of people are getting the pneumonia. So, I was sick as hell during the time I normally set traps, and my kit and steel just sat and sat.
Instead, just about every day after Christmas, I would go out for a couple hours and try to intercept a deer with the new flintlock, coughing quietly into my clothes to muffle the bark. I got off a lot of shots, collected blood and hair, but filled no tags. A new white checked Filson wool coat helped me blend in with the snowy woods.
Made for me by Mark Wheland, the new flintlock is a 62-caliber rifle based on the English Sporting Rifle design, which I have come to admire. It has a 28 inch decently swamped octagonal barrel by Getz from about 15 years ago, a beautiful patent breech made by Jason Schneider at Rice Barrels, a RE Davis late-flintlock era Manton-style waterproof lock, and a gorgeous stock of highly figured and irridescent English walnut. Wheland turned a perfect ebony ramrod, as well as its horn end and its threaded steel connector end.
The Manton-style lock has a roller frizzen, which is both very fast and also very touchy. Hunting in brush without bumping the heel of my hand up against the back of the frizzen would result in some blade of grass flicking it open and dumping the priming powder on the ground. So it requires some special handling, because it is so sensitive.
I also struggled with this gun’s sights all season long, probably also slowly acclimating to the short barrel. This barrel is ten inches shorter than that on my long-time go-to 54 caliber flintlock barrel, that is 38″ long, and my eyes have not yet made the transition. Moreover, the new gun has classic British rear sights, one standing and one folding leaf. The rear sites were conveyed to me with only the most rudimentary and shallow “V” filed in the standing sight, and the front sight was about a half inch high. It was up to me, in a short amount of time, to get this gun sighted in just days before bear season began, which is just days before deer season started.
So I just struggled to get the gun sighted in, and by the time actual flintlock season began, the day after Xmas, it was printing dead center and 2.5″ high at 50 yards. With 130 grains of FFG Swiss pushing the 335-grain lead round ball about 1500 feet per second, I reckoned it was probably dead-on at 100 yards. Or minute-of-deer chest within 100 yards.
I lost track of how many shots I took at deer. Mostly at does. One probably legal buck I let walk past me. Some deer I literally just walked right up to in the snow, and missed, maybe forty yards away. Others I ambushed from concealment on trail crossings, from fifty out to about 95 yards, while sitting. Each miss resulted in a little more blacking being put on the rear sight, a little more color added here or there, and by the end of the season the front sight was filed down to about 1/8″ high and painted bright neon orange. The rear sight has a bright neon yellow inverted V wedge under the V aperature, surrounded by black. I am thinking about scrapping the entire arrangement and going to front and rear fiber optic sights. Old eyes…
One doe was flattened by what seemed like a perfect broadside at 75 yards. I saw her go down through the cloud of smoke, and when I walked up I expected to find her stone cold dead. But while there was a perfect outline of her body in the snow, with plenty of blood, the actual deer was nowhere to be found. With dusk fast approaching, I used my headlamp to follow as far as I could in the snow and the thick brambles, and then went home. The next morning I returned and took up the trail, which resulted in three deer fleeing from fresh beds, one of which had some fresh drips of blood, but not much. Not even the coyotes would end up eating her.
My last shot of the season was taken like a mortar, at the biggest buck I have ever seen in the wild. He was just a bit over 200 yards away, and had been spooked out of his hidey nook by my prowling. When I snuck back towards the anticipated cut-off, he was indeed standing right there, looking all around, on high alert. While down wind, I was as close as I could get without being seen. So I took some pictures of him, which of course did not come out well, and then took careful aim with plenty of “Kentucky elevation” and let ‘er rip. At the shot he flew away with wings, and on my follow up I found where the big lead ball had hit the ground at plane, leaving a 20-foot-long long streak through the snow and dirt directly in line with the buck’s shoulder, but about 20 yards too short. His tracks were among the biggest I have ever seen. Guessing a 200″ buck.
The doe was flattened, and leaked some hydraulic fluid, but was gone and lived on
I have a lot more practice to do with this gun.
What looks like a shallow white “W” is just the higher visibility part of the huge buck’s enormous rack
Overnight beds, tiny amount of blood, a mere flesh wound and a long-lived lucky deer
The long path cut by the 335-grain round ball on its way towards the big buck
Nice view down into the woods, perfect for a flintlock. Yes, the barrel key is loose, which accounted for two missed shots
Hunting around an enormous buck capable of leaving big rubs like this one is excitement enough. Actually seeing him and getting a shot…even the miss is the highlight of the season
Hunting season re-cap
By popular demand by our one, single reader, we are going back in time a week or three, to when most hunting seasons ended. I was asked for a recapitulation of my own end of the hunting season, which, depending on which one we are talking about, could have been the end of January or mid February or even last week.
This past season was tough for me, for the simple reason that I am still recovering from a covid-related “medical event,” which really took the starch out of my shirt, the wind out of my sails, the gumption out of my Gump. Bit over a year ago, I was running the sawmill, stacking lumber, sawing logs, working very hard, getting ready for an annual out-of-state solo wilderness hunt that I do just about every year. It is a great hunt, whether I actually pull the trigger, or not, and it has resulted in both super Zen mind settling re-sets as well as the biggest bodied buck and the biggest bear I have ever killed.
So I was working overtime in the crisp Fall air filled with the sweet scent of falling oak leaves, trying to get a bunch of logs to disappear and become lumber, and enjoying the feeling of being in really great condition, and feeling physically powerful. Nothing like bossing big oak logs around with a cant hook and a pickaroon to make a guy feel strong.
By the end of the week I was in absolute beast mode. I might have been a bit heavy, but I was incredibly strong and in fabulous cardiovascular conditioning (proven by a radioactive dye test that same spring where the cardiologist told me I had the heart of an 18 year old). Over the years, I have made hunting guides and forest rangers alike laugh and shake their heads at the improbability of my non-svelte ability to carry a heavy pack and a rifle, and just go go go keep going to wherever we are going in the Scottish Highlands and many other mountain ranges from Maine to Alaska.
So I was ripped and in fantastic condition, ready to make the long drive to the out of state destination, just exit the truck, throw my pack on, grab my rifle, and head in about four to six miles. When finally out there, I live out of a Seek Outside teepee tent, which with a small titanium wood stove provides all the comforts of home I could ever need. Living on home made dried fruit, jerky, and Gatorade powder keeps everything super simple.
Hours before leaving, I woke up, feeling like I was about to die. Eventually convinced that I was in fact dying, I drove myself forty minutes to the nearest hospital, and turned myself in to the ER staff at 4AM.
“Whatever you are here for, you are in the right place,” said the wizened old lady at the ER check-in. Apparently I looked just as dandy as I felt.
Handfuls of blood clots from a freak Covid clot were sprinkled around my lungs and heart, which accounted for why I felt like I was dying. That I did not die right away amazed everyone medical. Had I reached my hunting destination without dying on the highway, I would have died in the teepee tent, and forest rangers would have had to recover my fat body in the middle of a designated wilderness area. Which would have scored me no points with people I am always trying to impress.
So, when your aging carcass nearly croaks like that, and you cannot breathe or move for months, your body begins to atrophy. Overnight. On an old body like mine, the warranty ran out long ago, and things and parts and bits of it just start going their own way. Months and tens of pounds of fat later, I was learning to walk again. Forget carrying heavy packs and rifles, just walking from one end of a damned log landing to the other end was a chore. Carrying a chainsaw? Unimaginable.
Two types of blood clots are related to Covid: The kind of “regular” red blood cell clot, which got me, which my cardiologist said they saw an enormous spike of from early 2020 to 2022, and the white, gooey clot that seems to result from the purported Covid “vaccine” shot. I never got the faux Covid vaccine shot, but I did have Covid at least twice, possibly three times. And so even a year or two later, people like me were still experiencing “late Covid” symptoms. Including death clots from out of the middle of nowhere, including originating from impossible parts of the body (not in deep muscle).
Whatever China cooked up in their Frankenstein lab in Wuhan, it was a real bitch, and China owes America at least a trillion dollars for all of the damage and death they inflicted on us. Screw you, China, you bastards ruined my fabulous annual solo hunt and kept me from doing it again the next year, too. Make your bill two trillion bucks.
So, this past hunting season, beginning in October, I was just starting to really move again. But it was slow going, and slowed down more by the incredible amount of excess baggage I had stashed away around my gut. But whaddaya know, those old timers who used to talk about their elder years being their best hunting skills time…they were right. Because when I started moving through and across our hills, fields, and especially our Pennsylvania mountains, I was by necessity moving slooooowly.
And when you move slowly, you move silently, and with more attention paid to your surroundings. This results in seeing more animals, at closer distances, than usual. Being close range to prey animals with a rifle in your hand is usually a recipe for success.
In rifle season I killed two deer up in the mountains this way, the slow, sickly, deadly old man way. Then I returned south to the mostly Flatlands, and proceeded to again slowly sneak up on a doe in the middle of a wind storm with snow on the ground, and shoot her with a lever action rifle at about twenty-five yards. I was starting to feel a lot better physically, and about life.
Later on, in the late season, I really struggled to master a new flintlock rifle, for which I had waited two years, after taking a year of my time just to assemble the parts. I will write about hunting deer with this beautiful new flintlock rifle tomorrow, as Part Two of this report.
Going to the inauguration? Not I
Despite being bombarded with tickets and neat opportunities to go to the inauguration of President Donald John Trump in Washington, DC, I was of no mind to go. Not because I am not hyped and excited about his presidency, which I am, because of the good he is already having on world peace and the American economy, even before he actually takes office.
Rather, I had no idea what to expect once I got down to DC. Was it going to be all rainbows and happy unicorns? Or was it going to be mass riots and violence against Trump supporters, with local police standing by and allowing it to happen? And what about my own home, possibly at risk in any mass hysteria…
I was thinking about the days before the 2020 election, when I received a phone call from an old family friend of my parents. Someone I had not seen in thirty years at least, nor spoken to. An old far-left Quaker, Sam was in his early seventies when he called me in late 2020, and he was happy to get me on the phone.
“If Trump wins, we are organzing a nationwide boycott, massive civil disobedience, shut down the streets, protest marches in every city. And we need good organizers, responsible adults to help us prepare. Can I count on you to come to an important meeting in Philly next week?”
To which I replied, “Sam, it is so nice to hear your voice. Been a real long time. I know you and Dad enjoyed your philanthropic bike ride together last year, which was cool to follow. But I have to tell you, I am not in college any longer. That was decades ago. I left the Quakers decades ago over their political ideology, and I left my policy job at the US EPA in DC over the ideology there, too. I left the Democrat Party in 1993, after Bill Clinton was elected and tried to take away everyone’s guns. And to your point, I have donated thousands of dollars to the Trump campaign because I am a huge Trump supporter. So I don’t think you want me coming, because I will definitely ruin your Black Panther party,” trying to borrow a phrase from the Forrest Gump movie that I thought humorous and appropriate at the moment.
But Sam didn’t have to pull his trigger. Right after my brief conversation with Sam, the 2020 election was blatantly stolen, and America endured an incredible amount of purposeful self-destructive abuse at the hands of the Biden Administration, enabled by the ever-corrupt and lazy Republican Party.
No, for me now, the logistics of being in or even getting to Washington, DC, and running a gantlet of violent leftists, just to reach the inauguration site, and then standing in the cold, and then doing it all in reverse, was just too daunting.
Fortunately for me, I no longer have to endure the torment of happy reports of smiling unicorns and rainbows from ecstatic revelers who did manage all of the significant logistics to participate in person. Now that the event has been moved indoors (supposedly for weather, but probably just as much for the safety of President Trump), I don’t imagine all that many people are going to go to DC.
Except for Sam’s rioters and street theater thugs. I am quite certain those people will show up to protest and hurt innocent Americans and break things, no matter what formalities are or are not held outside, or who else shows up to celebrate.
Considering it all, last week I was of no mind to go in person, and even more so now I would still rather be at home sitting by my cozy fireplace, watching the inauguration on TV. Or maybe I will go out hunting that very last day of flintlock season. We are supposed to get a wonderful dose of snow Sunday evening, perfect for deer tracking and hunting in on Monday…now THAT is a great way to celebrate America’s new birth of freedom!
Is sitting in a box actually hunting?
Hunting season is cold, and getting outside to seek deer or bear or really any other wild game animal requires a person to put up with some level of discomfort. You can put a lot of effort into hunting, and still come up empty handed. So to up the odds of escaping the attention of deer and bear, some hunters created hunting blinds up in trees. The least difficult ones were railroad sikes driven into a tree to be used as a ladder, and we would hoist ourselves up onto a stout lower limb, and there wait for a shot at a passing deer.
The truly old tree blinds from the 1930s and 1940s were ridiculously frail, made of random assortments of surplus lumber; practically death traps as soon as they were nailed up to living trees. The better old fashioned tree stands would usually be put on what we called an “Indian tree,” where someone a long time ago had deliberately bent over and caused a tree to grow parallel with the ground.
When the horizontal bent limb was at least a foot in diameter, enterprising hunters would find creative ways to attach a stable platform, usually reached by a dangerous rickety wooden ladder made out of woods trash and nails. Platforms ranged from plywood to rough cut boards, some with railings and tattered old olive drab canvas and maybe a stool. Deluxe versions had some sort of roof or covering to keep rain, snow, and sunshine off of the hunter. These elevated hunting blinds were usually eight to ten feet up off the ground, and if the rickety blind did not fall down and kill you, the hunter, then you could usually use it to kill a deer. Despite requiring skill just to stay in them, these blinds were always in demand, and elders got first dibs.
Here I am talking about the American Northeast, and Pennsylvania, specifically. Not about India, where the elevated machan gave hunters of dangerous game not only an opportunity to shoot before being detected by tigers and leopards, but a chance to get in at least one more shot or even a stabbing blow with a spear before the claws and fangs were at your throat.
Fast forward fifty years, and now elevated blinds are everywhere. But they are not like the old rickety kinds jimmied onto trees with long spikes us older guys fondly recall. Witness the rise of the elevated box blinds, which are light years ahead of the rickety wooden tree stands in use when I was a kid. These new ones look like Martian landers, and are sold along the side of RT. 15 from Duncannon to Williamsport, as well as anywhere farm machinery and grains are sold, or even in Amish farm yards.
These modern elevated hunting blinds are airtight, have windows that open and close, and safe ladders or steps made of treated lumber of metal. They are downright sophisticated, and one farm lease I know of has propane heaters in all of their elevated “huts” where guys literally cook their breakfast while waiting for a deer to show up out one of the sliding windows. Some of them are big enough to hold a whole family, and indeed these are like little remote hunting cabin outposts, where everyone from Pap to the youngest kids can comfortably take a poke at a deer from a steady rest with plenty of quiet encouragement around them.
The question is, Is this elevated box blind business actually hunting?
My four-plus-inch-thick 1987 Random House Dictionary (the resilient if lonely, unknown cornerstone of our written culture) says Hunt: To chase or search for game or other wild animals for the purpose of catching or killing.
How much chasing or searching do you see going on from the ubiquitous elevated box blinds?
Not a lot. Well, none. Shouldn’t hunting involve actual pursuit and physical exertion? Don’t we need to earn our kills?
Go on YouTube or Rumble, and you can watch hundreds of “hunting” videos of hunters sitting in elevated box blinds, overlooking crop fields and power lines. These hunters usually have a long period of self-discussion to their camera about what they are looking for, any shots taken and misses they have had, etc. They have tripods and bipods, heaters, shelves with food, windows, and are generally protected from the punishing elements that mark hunting season.
The most dispiriting of this video genre has little kids holding forth, as if experienced adults, about the relative merits of various bucks caught on cell camera trail cams that very morning, and whether or not any of them are good enough for our young camerman.
And so I think we have to ask if this elevated box blind is not really hunting, then is it good for hunting? If maintained as a hunting method after their first one or two confidence building kills, the little kids are for sure being ruined by this stuff. Because it is not reality.
People who think that hunting season solely involves sitting in one spot all day, especially an enclosed and elevated spot, and then stiffly climbing down to either bitch about the lack of deer or worse, to boast about one’s prowess whacking “the big one“, are not hunters. They are shooters. If they have at all practiced target shooting before season, and they have some huge Hubble Telescope mounted on their Million Magnum Blastem Rifle, then surely they can make that three hundred yard shot on some unsuspecting deer eating dinner in a crop field.
Sorry to be negative about this, but we are losing our souls to these elevated blinds. Yes, they make hunting season more comfortable, and they make ambushing and surprising our quarry easier, but they are really dumbing down and whittling off our hunting instincts and skills, our woodcraft that separates us from the flatlander slobs who have no self reliance abilities. Hunting is not supposed to be easy, or comfortable, it is supposed to test us and make us earn the trophies we kill.
In Europe and Asia, hunting was used until the 1800s by warriors to hone their combat skills. Nothing like dismounting your horse to face off at ground level with a mean 4,000 pound Gaur or a ferocious 1,000 pound wild boar, armed with a stout spear in hand and a short sword at your hip. Back then, hunters were tough. As were our own American Longhunters on our frontier.
You want to actually hunt? Go do a deer drive like the BNB Outdoors kids, or with The Hunting Public guys. Or take a quiet, slow still hunt woods walk like John does at Leatherwood Outdoors. These hunts take skill and effort, which is the heart and soul of the chase. Everything else is just a hands-on video game at this point. No thanks.
A deer taken while still hunting two weeks ago, with open sights. Don’t look too closely, it was hit between the eyes.
Checking nearby cell cameras to see where the deer are while sitting in a blind…
Not picking on anyone here, but you boys can do better than this
Calling Elon Musk, we have landed on Mars
Ballistics Lesson #439
Today I learned a ballistics lesson that I have learned before, that everyone under the sun knows, but which I always seem to forget every few years. Maybe it is not forgetting, but curious wondering that gets the better of me. If you are interested in reading about an old man making a foolish mistake, read on.
So late this morning I set out to still hunt a large section of reverting, regenerating forest. It is brutal stuff – blackberry, briars, weeds of every sort, and jungle-thick growth of oak and popar saplings and whips, all anchored in downed tree tops and branches from a timber sale we did about twelve years ago. It is hell to hunt, and that is why this place is full of hiding deer. So, we go to where the deer are, and if we do it right, we can still-hunt our way into close range of a fat doe or a decent buck just rising out of his bed.
When I finally got there after a fifteen minute hike, the wind was howling, tree branches were falling, leaves were flying, and the couple inches of snow on the ground made it all perfect. And so I set out very slowly walking into the wind, taking a few steps, then stopping to look all around, watching not to step on any big sticks that would make a loud crack, and also moving quickly when the wind raged. My own movements and sounds were masked by the crazy roaring winds and falling tree debris from above.
After about ten minutes of slowly picking my way downhill and into the wind, I was looking at a nice juicy doe. Probably two years old and plump, she was just 25 yards away and looking around. She probably was getting brief whiffs of me, but in the blasting seesawing winds she was not able to get a read on where the scent was coming from. Too late for her, I raised the rifle and bang, watched her standing there, unfazed. A clear miss.
Levering another round into the chamber, I took more careful aim at her, now acutely aware of the chunky backpack strap on my shoulder that was making it difficult to correctly anchor the buttstock to my cheek. With her right shoulder clearly centered in the ghost ring, I pulled the trigger and again, watched as she just stood there, stock still and unable to detect where the strange sounds and smells were coming from.
As I jacked a third round in, she suddenly jumped up and took off running fast, downhill, her head pointed low and her tail tucked. She was obviously hit by the second shot, but usually the 325 grain 45-70 caliber bullets just absolutely smash critters at that close range. I know from my own experience. But this running after the smashing blow was a new one to me.
And so I took my time to catch up to her clear trail in the leaves and snow. I searched around on the ground and found the two spent brass shells ejected from the Marlin, shook off the snow, and put them in my left front pocket.
Initially, no blood was visible, but her feet were going in all directions as she staggered. She was hard hit and struggling. A hundred yards later, large smudges of blood and hair appeared on trees. Then blood on the snow. Another hundred yards and we were out of the more open forest regeneration and back into the thick jungle. Her clumsy hoof marks were easy to see, and here and there was blood. This animal was dying and did not know it. At every turn I expected to find her lying there, expired. So much indication of impending death, and yet so much resilience to live on.
The long and short of this tale is, I ended up tracking her for over an hour, which is an eternity. During this time I had bedded deer up and running in all directions, including a large buck. If you really want deer, the thick, nasty, gnarly places are where they are hiding. But I was after this one wounded doe, and I had no eyes for any others, including one that stood up almost in front of me. After quickly checking that she was not bleeding, I let her leave.
Doing a 360 degree circle around where her last blood sign was located, I determined that she was either dead or close to dying in a large tangle of old rotting tree tops covered in Japanese stiltgrass, burdock, mile-a-minute, bramble, and briar. Nasty, difficult, not a place for a man to easily or comfortably move in, I marked where she was and moved on to the afternoon sit a mile away. Tomorrow morning I will return and find her frozen body. Unless the coyotes get to her first, she will feed a hungry family here in Central PA.
After withstanding the afternoon’s buffeting winds and feeling colder than I have in years on the edge of the crop field, I finally gathered my kit, ducked out of my friend’s blind, and headed back to the truck. He later sent me a trail camera picture of the local deer herd walking out into the crop field literally one minute after I had exited the blind. They knew I was there and were just waiting for me to leave.
Back home I emptied my pockets onto the kitchen island, including the two empty 45-70 brass cases I had emptied at the doe. Picking them up to look at them, I noticed that one of them had the Hornady stamp, and the other bore the Star Line stamp. I use the factory 325 grain Hornady FTX bullets for bear and deer hunting (very successfully with both species), and I reload the Star Line with 325 grain brass solids, from Cutting Edge Bullets, for grizzly self defense in Alaska and for black bear hunting here in Pennsylvania. Especially on drives through the laurel. These brass solids will absolutely and unstoppably smash their way through a tough grizzly bear with its heavy bones and super tough muscles, but they will ziiiiip right through a whitetail deer.
And suddenly it dawned on me. I had first overshot and missed the doe with the Hornady FTX, and then literally drilled her body through-and-through with the brass solid second shot. I had jumbled up the two loads in my pockets, and when loading the rifle I had failed to put a second Hornady FTX round in the gun as the initial followup shot. Instead, I had a grizzly bear load as the followup shot, and as one might expect, the grizzly bear load did not kill the doe on the spot. Nope. That brass solid at 2100 feet per second just zipped cleanly through her entire body like a small laser beam. None of its energy was dumped into her by the bullet mushrooming, with massive terminal shock, as the FTX is designed to do.
And only then, when back at home, did I understand why the doe had reacted that way, how she took a few seconds to realize that something bad had happened to her, but that while fatal, it was not something that was going to kill her dead right there. She was only mostly dead from the brass solid. By now, as I write this, she is most assuredly frozen solid in that tangled hell that I will go back to tomorrow morning. Hopefully the coyotes will not have found her.
Had I used the correct expanding bullet, I would have had nothing to write about tonight. It would have been just another successful slow stalk through the thick ‘n nasty, with the rifle butt up at my shoulder, the hammer back, and me ready to jump shoot a deer.
Instead, I had to re-learn a rudimentary ballistics lesson, which is if you want to kill thin skinned game, use expanding bullets that transfer all of their energy into the prey animal’s body. If you shoot a high velocity scalpel at the prey animal, it will cleanly and surgically cut it, even make neat clean holes through bones, but that wound might not bleed much and the animal might not know it is supposed to be dead until it has run a long distance away from the man with the gun, and into impossible cover.
Sign like this, blood smear and hair at deer chest height, says this is a dead deer running.
A 325 grain solid brass Cutting Edge Bullets 45-70 load I make for grizzly in Alaska is a terrible backup load for whitetail deer
Why do people trespass on private property?
During one of his many temporary incarcerations, infamous bank robber John Dillinger was asked by a news reporter why he robbed banks, and he famously quipped “Because that’s where the money is.” Funny enough, true enough, but Dillinger eventually ended up being shot to death by both civilians and a ragtag assortment of law enforcement agents who were fed up with his lawlessness.
I have been similarly wondering: Do people, particularly hunters, trespass on private property because that is where the wild game is? Or is there some other reason that turns otherwise normal people into lawless jerks who instigate their victims into acts of violent retaliatory fury?
My observation and experience is hunters, in particular, trespass on posted private land, and end up poaching wildlife there, because they are drawn to the mystery and promise of new territory. They think that a plot of private land that is carefully cultivated wildlife habitat must have some really nice, abundant, maybe even trophy wildlife on it. And sometimes these outlaws do, in fact, stumble into a kind of bank vault of wildlife, where they feel like they have hit the jackpot.
The problem with trespassing on posted private hunting land is that someone else, the landowner or a club that leases from the owner, has probably spent a lot of time and resources maintaining that land. Paying the real estate taxes on it, managing it, making it a sanctuary or haven for wildlife. All year long that landowner runs chainsaws, plants and prunes fruit trees, sprays herbicides, clears trails, plants various crops like clover that most wildlife find attractive.
These considerable efforts are done for the benefit of the landowner, his family, his friends, or for the club members who pay him for the opportunity to exclusively hunt there, in a very brief window of time. Hunting seasons are usually just a few weeks long. This investment of time and money is like any other investment, say, a savings account at your local bank. Or your retirement pension.
Trespassing and poaching are not victimless crimes. A landowner’s entire year’s work can go out the window from it.
Trespassers enter into the private property and, purposefully or by mistake, disturb the wildlife, maybe scare it away and off the property; poachers kill the wildlife. These disruptions come at a great cost to the landowner, who for 50 prior weeks has been working hard, husbanding the land’s natural resources, and suddenly finds himself at a disadvantage when he should be reaping his just reward.
Someone else has come along and taken advantage of all his hard work and investment, someone else has claimed his reward that he was looking forward to. Most often, the trespass intrusion and poaching so greatly disturb the property’s carefully arranged balance, that the landowner gets little to nothing of what he had worked so hard to attain. And hunting seasons are so brief that there is no time to wait out the disturbance.
This is exactly how both trespassing and poaching are forms of theft. Thievery. Scumbag-ness. Dirtball-ness. A-hole-ness. And when someone has stolen something from the landowner, the landowner can get angry about it. Sometimes really, really angry. Especially if the thief acts like the whole thing is no big deal. Because it is a really big deal to screw a landowner over and steal away from him his hard work and promise of success.
Confession time: I have been a scary person when encountering trespassers and poachers (scary to them and often to me). Not long ago a warden asked me to consider becoming a deputy warden, and I responded that I could not do that, because I get so angry at trespassers and game thieves that it would be unbecoming to see someone in an official uniform lose their cool. Yes, I have had people charged in court, but often my hand tightly around someone’s shirt collar while they get roughly dragged off the property is enough to convince trespassers that other venues hold more promise and less danger. I don’t know if many other landowners operate this way, but I am super old school. A facility with firearms and knowledge of the law also helps build confidence when dealing with armed trespassers and poachers.
As one state trooper said to a trespasser I had roughly collared, “Yes, Josh is armed. But YOU are armed, too. Is he supposed to let you shoot him so you can make your getaway? Here is your citation, do not come back here.”
Some people trespass because they are looking for things to steal, including rare plants or animals, or to drive off wild game they don’t want the landowner to get. Others trespass so they can poach wildlife through illegal hunting. Others may simply get a jolt of excitment, or are simply curious.
Folks, trespassing and poaching are a really big deal. Some landowners make a significant income from leasing their hunting land, and poachers undermine that investment. Some landowners treasure their privacy, and seeing an armed thief skulking around their property makes them feel directly threatened. So don’t do it. Don’t think it is no big deal to slip past the No Trespassing purple paint or sign and “just take my gun for a walk” or take a Sunday drive up that posted driveway.
That walk that comes so casually to you, the trespasser, comes at someone else’s expense, even if you do not see it right then. And it could end up costing you everything. No wild game animal is worth getting in trouble over, and certainly not losing your life or mobility for.
The answer to the temptation to trespass on private land is to listen to that little voice in the back of your mind warning you not to take the chance. Go to public lands for your hunting and fishing adventures. Here in Pennsylvania, public lands are super abundant. If you don’t like sharing public lands with the general public, why then, go buy yourself a piece of land and make it your very own wildlife sanctuary.
Had the once popular John Dillinger stopped robbing banks when he made that cute quip of his, he could have easily slipped away into anonymity and comfortable living, or even into celebrity and wealthy living as a free man. But he pushed it too far, and paid the ultimate price. Like too many thieves pay every day….Guys, don’t trespass and don’t poach.
And yes, baiting is a form of poaching and wild game theft. Don’t do it.
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UPDATE December 2, 2024: Today I was sitting on a remote hillside in Northcentral Pennsylvania, with a rifle across my knees, overlooking private land surrounded by about two million acres of public land, enjoying the snow-covered serenity. Suddenly, loud voices approaching from behind grabbed my attention. Through a normally silent piece of state forest emerged four young men, in hunter orange and preparing to drive off the piece of private land.
Looking at the leader, who was giving specific directions about how to spread out and push the deer off the private land, I turned to face all of them and asked “Did we grant you permission to hunt here?”
“I mean, we have a bunch of people down in there right now, deer hunting, and they don’t expect to have anyone walking through.”
The curse-word filled abuse heaped on me caught me off guard. Me, easily the age of the fathers of these four young men, very much their elder and merely a private landowner asking an elementary question that any landowner would ask of uninvited guests, was now the bad guy.
“Eff you” Eff this” “Eff him” “Eff that” were the nicer things said to me as the young men checked that the boundary was clearly marked and backed up and regrouped.
I do not know or understand who raises such poorly behaved and aggressive young men, but for those who are inclined to ascribe poor behavior only to people with dark skin, I am here to tell you these were four white guys. Out in the middle of the big nowhere, armed with rifles, and acting like a criminal gang. With all their anger, I wondered if one of them was going to shoot me in the back.
They had already loudly walked a half mile from their remote parking spot (that itself is a long and arduous drive to reach) through laurel-choked oak woods that normally is full of deer, as the abundant deer tracks in the deep snow attested to. What if these four “hunters” had done a silent deer drive from their vehicle out to the private land they intended to sneak on? They might have already bagged a deer. Instead, they talked so loudly, so boisterously, for so long, that I thought they much have been forest workers. Never in my life have I heard hunters this loud in the woods.
Their behavior makes no sense, unless their goal was simply to spoil the posted private land that they already know is off-limits and that they were jealous of and wanted to ruin for hunting by anyone else….
Good luck, deer hunters
Practically a religious holiday event, Pennsylvania rifle season for deer starts tomorrow morning, and I want to wish everyone who participates a hearty Good Luck. Up north, where poor to no acorn crops this Fall seemed to be widespread, finding deer is probably going to be more difficult than usual.
All the reports I heard from bear hunters across the northcentral region here is that acorns were nonexistant. But deer are spread all over the state, and they are doing better than just OK in places with farm fields and suburban lawns. If you just want to kill a fat buck with a nice set of antlers, you should go sit on my buddy Mark’s porch in Camp Hill/ Mechanicsburg. I am sure you can easily nail one of the stud bucks that casually lay about and wander around Mark’s yard every day, with a crossbow. Mark is not alone, as anyone who lives up on Blue Mountain north of Harrisburg will tell you. Deer are everywhere in these urban/surburban places.
Pennsylvanians traditionally like to hunt in the Big Woods because it is, well, big and woodsy, and quiet, serene, magical, inspiring. Wilder places have always been where religions start, where the voice of God is easiest to hear. People are drawn to the mountains to hunt, not just to hunt, but to hunt surrounded by beauty. This is where I like to hunt. Add to that a mix of beautiful antique and black powder firearms, and life is just fiiiine, even if a skunk is all I encounter.
This year, I suspect our deer hunters up north are going to get a lot more beauty and less deer. Hope I am wrong. Fortunate am I that I am easily amused by fondling blued steel and aged walnut while sitting on my can in the cold.
Good luck, shoot straight, and have a fun, safe hunt, everyone.
PA is at Peak Rut, so just do it
I drove through farmland, mountains, and valleys a couple days ago, and I swear to you, no lie, I saw a huge stud buck out in every field I went by. Half were alone, half were with a doe. Some of these monsters were standing close to the highway, which explains why the highways I drove on were littered with dead bucks from car collisions.
We have deer literally coming out of our ears. And not just any deer, but freaking huge trophy bucks that were unimaginable when I was a kid, and an adult. These are trophy animals by any standard, whether you hunt in Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, or Indiana.
Twenty four years ago, Pennsylvania entered uncharted waters and started a new deer management program. I was peripherally involved as a mostly bystander with field level fifty yard line seats. The PA Game Commission’s new deer management methodology was biologically sound, but untested in modern times. And because it involved axe murdering about fifty percent or more of the standing doe population, and setting aside all the small bucks, almost every old timer hunter went into a kiniption fit.
Families fell apart, PGC commissioners and staff wore bulletproof vests to PGC board meetings, people’s tires were slashed, hunting clubs dissolved, and for about fifteen years PA’s political map was turned upside down. Go ahead and laugh all you flatlanders, go ahead, yuk it up. What a bunch of rubes, what a bunch of rednecks and hayseed hillbillies…who in their right mind cares about deer management so much that literally our state politics got turned upside down?
Fun fact: Hunting in Pennsylvania is about a $1.5 Billion annual industry, and maybe more than that. Hunting is a sustainable, renewable, ecologically sound industry. For just a few months a year. So a lot is at stake when changes are made to the hunting system. It isn’t just hillbilly farmers who like to hunt who are impacted by hunting regulations here, it is literally every small rural town that has a restaurant or two, the deer processors, the hunting clothing manufacturers. Hunting in PA is big business.
So when I say that I saw all these huge bucks the other day, it means that the PGC deer management program, which began with a small mushroom cloud in 2000, is now working as planned like a Swiss watch. You don’t get to see government actually do positive things very often, or implement policies that work, but in this instance we did, we do. The PA Game Commission deserves a lot of credit for both using sound biology AND stoically enduring the brutal politics that followed.
Right now PA is at peak rut, meaning the bucks are in full rut, horned up and lookin’ for love. Like all stupid men chasing tail, huge bucks that are otherwise almost impossible to get near (because they are smart as hell) can now easily find themselves broadside to a bow and arrow at fifteen yards. So go do it, git yerself sum.
May I recommend a few things?
First, whatever skills you developed in the early archery season, they are now only partly applicable. Because rutting bucks are wanderers, the bucks you scouted and marked down in October could be the next county over. This means that you cannot just set up over a trail and wait. You need to lure in the wandering bucks, and that can be done with doe pee (https://kirschnerdeerlure.com/ get the SilverTop), a sparingly used grunt call, or rattling antlers. This also means that bucks from the next county over will be wandering around where you hunt.
Second, work hard on concealing your blinds. Especially your ground blinds. Man, nothing is more garish and glaring than a poorly concealed ground blind. I see guys just setting a blind out in the open and hoping a deer won’t notice. But guys, come on, the deer might now see you inside the blind, but THEY CAN SEE YOUR BLIND and they are spooked by it. It is an unnatural thing on the landscape. So tuck your blind back into the edge of the woods and brush it in well, so that it blends in with the surroundings.
Happy hunting, and just do it, get yourself one of PA’s unbelievable trophy bucks wandering around hill and dale right now. And do not forget to thank PGC personnel when you see them, because they are the ones who implemented the outstanding deer management policy that we are all benefiting from now.
PA Game Commission changing leadership
Kind of a wildlife management wild ride here in the Keystone State, though it is tough to tell if anyone really noticed or if anyone really cared. I care. People who care about animals should care.
In just a few weeks the Pennsylvania Game Commission has gone from from a very traditional conservation leadership style and background to a new style and background we have not seen in over a hundred years. I think this is a good thing, though I am sad about how it happened.
Recall that several months ago, attorney Steve Smith was promoted from director of the PGC’s Bureau of Information to deputy director of the agency, second in command to executive director Bryan Burhans. A good choice, as Smith is the very image of the dutiful, honest, earnest, hard working, straight shooting, unemotional, careful, procedurally diligent government employee. While PGC is a long way from the colorful Wild West frontier culture it once had, it still has a shadow of a bunker mentality and insular culture that do not serve the agency, its employees, or the public, and Steve is not representative of that.
Where Bryan Burhans had worked at the American Chestnut Foundation and other iconic conservation and wildlife management groups, with direct personal contacts in the nonprofit and foundation world, Steve Smith is an attorney who just happens to hunt, fish, and trap, and of course share the wildlife and habitat conservation ethos that animates hunters, trappers, and “fisherpeople” everywhere.
A devoted family man, Smith worked in private legal practice before joining PGC’s legal staff about 16 years ago. Where Burhans carried the mail for nonprofit advocacy groups both out of PGC and in it, which is the traditional model for wildlife management agency leaders across America, Smith has been long focused on public agency nuts and bolts. Dotting I’s and crossing T’s in the shadow of big speeches and public policy debates.
There is a gigantic world of difference between these two men, Bryan and Steve; their backgrounds, personalities, and outlooks could not be more different. Again, we are going from strength to strength with the change.
Bryan Burhans gets tons and tons of credit for gently, sometimes assertively molding the PGC into a more publicly accessible, publicly responsive public agency. Unlike most of his predecessors, Bryan was not a former Game Warden. And so from his own get-go seven years ago he was less insular, less committed to the law enforcement view of all things wildlife.
Yes, if you read some news reports about Bryan’s departure a couple weeks ago, you will then read about some state lawmakers griping that the agency is still not as accessible or responsive as the PA Fish & Boat Commission. I am sure that is true, and for good reasons. But compared to where the once insular and bunker-mentality PGC was, say, ten years ago, or especially twenty-five years ago, it is light years better now. Much improved. And, gasp if you must, the PGC actually now employs women in senior positions. This may be not big news to most people, but it is a fact that wildlife agencies are notoriously hide-bound and ultra traditional, the PGC having rung the bell in this regard for a long time. Celebrated wildlife biologists like Mary Jo Casalena may work for PGC, but it is as rare as hen turkey teeth that they also then get into senior management positions.
What is interesting about Steve Smith’s elevation to executive director upon Bryan’s departure is that we are actually seeing Pennsylvania wildlife management style return back to the days of Kolbfus and Pinchot – Americans without the supposedly key wildlife science “credentials” who simply care very much about wildlife, environmental quality, and habitat, and who have the intellectual capacity and personal management skills to implement the necessary policies.
PGC’s executive director is going from an outspoken advocate (albeit occasionally for things unrelated to wildlife management) to a quiet, humble, careful, almost reticent thinker. I am lamenting Bryan’s good-bye, because he did an outsanding job, and I am also really welcoming Steve’s hello. I believe that the many passionate watchers and stakeholders of PGC will be happy with Steve’s leadership there. Of course, those hunters who demand more deer than the landscape or society can sustain will never be satisfied, and I feel sorry for those people.
Update: Long and interesting interview with new ED Steve Smith is here.
Some wonderful people gone
Jokes abound about aging, and quite a few are about those friends and family members who do not age with us, but who leave us all as we continue our own trajectory. Well, I am now definitely in the “aging” category and I am increasingly surrounded by people I enjoy and love who suddenly depart from this life. Recently two people here in Pennsylvania have left us all, and moved on to the spirit world, who I would like to mention. And it’s no joke, this dying thing. No matter what age a person is when they depart this life for the next, there is nothing funny about it.
Except maybe the last day on earth of European-Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, whose wild and often debauched Marxist Bohemian lifestyle made for intriguing movies and books. While some or maybe even a lot of the facts of Frida’s life may be funny depending upon the person considering them, her actual physical departure from this planet really is funny. I think.
After Frida died relatively young from cancer, or whatever it is that eventually afflicts the heavily debauched, her friends had her corpse dressed beautifully in her most customary colorful and flamboyant way, and prepared themselves all for a formal cremation send-off party in whatever crematory was present in Mexico City at the time. Her friends gathered in the crematory room while Frida’s corpse was ceremoniously loaded into the burn chamber, and as the roaring natural gas flames came to life, they all raised their glasses and toasted Frida.
And then the room erupted in gasps, cries, and people running for the exits, because suddenly Frida’s corpse stiffly bent at the waist, sat up, and made a wicked grin as her abundant hair caught on fire and created a demonic flaming halo around her yet untouched face. She wasn’t actually gone!
Yes, this was all her body’s muscular reaction to the sudden burst of 2,000-degree heat enveloping it, but apparently if you knew Frida, you kind of didn’t expect her to just die, you know, lie still and never move again. And indeed, she had lived up to all the hype about her, even while lying quite dead in the cremation chamber. I think this true story is funny, even though I did not know Frida and was not present at her cremation.
What is not funny and yet is not unexpected is the recent departure of Jim Brett, of Lenhartsville, PA, which for our geographically challenged readers is just north of I-78 and just south of Blue Mountain in Berks County, PA. Still confused where Lenhartsville, PA, is? OK, yes, it is the equivalent of East Succotash, PA, Nowheresville, PA, etc., and it is just about next to Hawk Mountain, the internationally famous sanctuary devoted to conserving birds of prey, especially on their annual migration south. There, solved this location question for you.
Hawk Mountain started as a simple land purchase to keep the shotgunners from standing on Blue Mountain’s highest Tuscarora sandstone boulder ridgetop and mindlessly swatting down out of the sky nearly every raptor that flew by on its way to South America. And in short order, more land purchases were added to what is now called the Kittatinny Ridge migration corridor. Hawk Mountain eventually became an educational organization and a destination for birders.
In the 1930s, birds of prey (hawks, owls, eagles, kites, vultures) were considered pestilential nuisances to farmers’ chickens and the rabbits and pheasants hunters enjoyed pursuing. In time, around the 1930s, raptors gradually became understood by some Americans as an important part of a healthy and properly functioning ecosystem, just as balanced populations of wolves, bears, mountain lions, bobcats and fishers have been subsequently understood today.
Hawk Mountain is now the world’s oldest continuously functioning conservation organization, but from 1934 to 1966 it was kind of a hidden gem, a hole in the wall of Blue Mountain that only certain initiates knew about or appreciated. It became much better known and more widely appreciated and much visited after Jim Brett became its second “curator,” as the chief executive position there is uniquely called.
As its leader, Jim Brett elevated Hawk Mountain to international status, built lots of buildings, hired lots of staff, attracted a lot of visitors, raised a lot of money, and he became a leading voice in bird conservation around our little blue and green planet.
On the outside, Jim Brett was a colorful Irishman, full of naughty jokes and a singular ability to imbibe liberally (often of his own make) and then hold forth to a captivated audience about biological and ecological science. But because Jim’s mother was Jewish, he had a separate interest in Israel, which, because it sits on a physical crossroads, is a lot like Blue Mountain. Israel is a birding Mecca.
A “sh*t ton” as Jim would say of raptors, storks, and other incredible and rare bird populations migrate through Israel, and Jim made their conservation from one end of their migration to the other one of his life’s missions. His Jewish half worked well with the Israelis, and his Irish half worked very well with the surrounding populations. One of his crowning achievements was working with Yossi Leshem to resolve bird strikes on Israeli fighter jets.
By finding ways to greatly reduce large rare birds being suddenly introduced to fighter jets at 1,000 mph, Yossi Leshem & Co. were able to save the lives of said rare birds, said giant titanium war eagles, and unsaid but implied young fighter pilots. It really was one of the great wild birds-living-with-modern-humans conservation success stories.
I met Jim Brett in 1998, when I had started working at PA DCNR in Harrisburg (having fled the corrupt and destructive US EPA in Washington DC). He was giving a presentation at an environmental and conservation education conference in Harrisburg, PA, and as the DCNR director of said polysyllabic educational field, it was my duty to both speak and to listen. Jim was standing up on the stage showing ancient stone tool artifacts and explaining the nexus between primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyles and the conservation or decimation of wildlife. I was hooked immediately.
Jim and I maintained a close personal and professional relationship until Fall, 2009, when I ran in a congressional primary (I was prompted to run by the devoutly corrupt and evil Manchurian Candidate Barack Hussein Obama, then president for nine months). My expressing my long quietly held political views educated not just Jim, but a sh*t ton of my “friends” and fellow conservationists alike about my true self. Gasp. Turned out that Jim did not know how conservative I was, and I did not know how liberal Jim was, and despite my desire to remain close, Jim had a hard time with it.
After 2009, our relationship involved less and less personal time, and fewer phone calls. I still have a generous gift that Jim gave me, which I occasionally take out and look at, admire, and then put it back in its safe place.
Jim and I stayed in touch through mutual friends for many years, including those who went on his African safaris he led. I can still recall Jim describing the funeral rite for a young son of a Maasai tribal leader, which he witnessed some time in the 1980s, I think: The boy’s body was ritually washed and then slathered in lamb fat, then put in the chieftain’s hut. The entire village was then evacuated and moved to an entirely new location, where a new settlement would be constructed. After the hyenas had entered the old village and consumed the boy’s body, the entire place was torched and left to become natural ecosystem thereafter.
Jim’s bright blue eyes flashed as he told this story, as indeed one would expect from someone so in tune with the endless hidden vibrations of our magical natural world. Though I know his spirit is now soaring with the majestic raptors, I doubt Jim’s liver will ever go the way of the hyena, Frida, or any mortal flesh for that matter. His official obituaries are here and here.
A second loss is someone I knew less closely, but with whom I shared a great deal in common and with whom I filled my buck tag this season: Phil Benner of Liberty, PA.
Until he unexpectedly died of Covid several days ago, the incredibly physically fit Phil Benner was a devoted father, a devoted husband, a devoted brother, a devoted uncle, a devoted son. He was a hard working small business owner, a risk-taking entrepreneur, and a pastor who saw God and felt Him deeply in the natural world around him, including the leaves rustling in the winter tree branches, and the quiet tinklebell sound of a small mountain stream’s clear waters falling over boulders. He appreciated everything and took nothing for granted.
Not only will I miss Phil Benner, the world will miss Phil Benner, because the world needs a billion more gentle, charitable, loving, devoted, kind, tolerant, peaceful Phil Benners. His loss is huge.
Phil Benner showing his son Nate how to remove a buck’s head with a large and sharp hunting knife
Phil Benner and his son Nate with a large bodied six point buck taken in Pine Creek Valley in late November, 2023
