by Marty Thomas
I sometimes wonder if old men don’t go through a second childhood. You take a fellow that has worked all his life, and has been dedicated to his family and making mature decisions, and suddenly he looks up and his kids are grown. Hell, he has grown grandkids.
He starts loosing friends as age takes it’s toll and suddenly he kind of slips on the whole ‘making good decisions’ thing. He keeps slowly slipping back to his teen years and starts fishing in the rain or setting in a deer stand all day, when he knows the deer are all moving at night.
I said all that to help explain why I would pick up and drive 24 hours to hunt in a blizzard when I have plenty of deer in my back yard. I wanted to hunt the 50-year anniversary of Pennsylvania’s flintlock only hunting season, even though I knew the weather was going to be awful.
My first day of hunting was 14 degrees, but the 40 mph wind gusts made it feel like -7. I sat from dawn until dark in a really nice stand with a heater so the weather was no problem. I saw several does but they all stayed out around 100 yards and when I looked at them over my sights, with the winds and snow, I just didn’t feel good about the shot. That night my guide, Anthony, told me he had another farm I could hunt but the blind was the old school box with three sides open the last two feet, and no windows. Well, using my 10-year-old judgement, we made a plan that I would set there until I either killed a deer or froze out. At noon I had to call for a ride. All morning the 40 mph gusts were making dust devils out of the snow and slamming into me. The weather was so bad, it was silly. He moved me to another stand and I was thrilled to see it had windows.
That afternoon I had what I thought was a giant button head that hung around, and several does at 80 to 100 yards but it was snowing so hard that I just didn’t feel good about taking the shot. The next morning I was back in the same stand with the same button head for company. I noticed he looked gimpy but didn’t think much of it. Anthony texted me at noon to check on me and I texted him a picture of the buck. He replied that it was not a button but it was a buck that had been wounded a couple of weeks earlier and that if he gave me a shot that I should knock him down as he would not survive the brutal winter up there.He was still hanging around coming out into the field and digging up a radish and then slipping back into the woods.
He came and went several times and as I tracked him it just never felt right. It was always either a little too far or quartering to me. Finally, two-and-a-half hours later, things came together. He had been digging around in the middle of the field and was headed back to the woods on a path that would put him 75 yards from me. He was in no big hurry and was slowly making his way back into the woods. I tracked him with my rifle and suddenly everything felt right. I waited for a big gust to clear and as soon as it passed I started squeezing the trigger. The .58 caliber Kibler Colonel belched fire and smoke, and the buck lit out for the woods. I could see the off side leg was swinging loose. He made 5 or 6 jumps before his front end gave out and he crashed down and skidded to a stop.
I was tickled to have me a Pennsylvania deer to take back to Texas. The round ball had passed in behind one shoulder, hit the other and turned up into his neck. One shoulder was nasty from the previous arrow wound, but I took the other one along with the back straps, tinder loins and hind quarters.
All in, it was pretty silly to drive all that way to sit out in a blizzard, but like I said, the older I get the more I allow myself to do dumb stuff, if it makes me happy. This adventure made me happy and I didn’t die, so all is well with the world.
If anyone wants to hunt with a top notch guide that has a bunch of farms in northern PA give Anthony a call.
He is a pleasure to hunt with (845) 978-3203.
