Year of Harvest: 1998
Story and Comments.: My hunting season actually started in September in 1998 because that is the month I would be mowing the grass at our McKean Co.,Pa. camp. Since I would be there to mow, I would also take advantage of the opportunity to do some preseason scouting for the upcoming archery season.
I was quite surprised when I started walking through the woods and found that there was more buck sign than I had ever seen in the past this early in the fall. Every day I was at camp that Sept. I would walk during the day and then sit & watch in the evenings trying to find the bucks. It did work out for me as far as locating some bucks but they were the typical 1 1/2 year olds. I wasn't looking for anything more than that nor expecting anything else.
When the season rolled around,myself,some other camp members and some friends spent some time hunting the early part of the season with no luck. Some of us made several trips to camp during Oct. but other than me missing a small buck,there wasn't much happening. When November arrived we were mixing some turkey hunting in with the deer hunting and as usual, we started to notice a little more deer activity. I wasn't very happy with my stand site at this point so I decided to go to an area I had hunted the first week of the season and see if there was any new sign. So the morning of Nov. 5 th. I grabbed my shotgun & headed out on a turkey hunting/deer scouting mission. When I got to the area I had hunted just a few weeks earlier I couldn't believe what I saw. It looked as if a tornado had gone through and turned everything upside down. The entire forest floor was tore up and it seemed that every tree had a fresh rub. In addition, there were many beds, and droppings were laying everywhere. It looked as if every deer in the state had been running through there.
So back to camp I go,drop the shotgun, grab the bow & climber and head back . I climbed the same tree I'd used in Oct. and as the afternoon wore on and nothing happened,the same old doubts started to fill my mind,but lucky for me that was to soon change. About 4:00 P.M. I heard the loudest and strangest sound that I've ever heard in the woods. It sounded as if there was a bunch of rabbit hunters lined up & walking through the knee deep leafs just out of sight, but the sound was not moving. I couldn't imagine what could possibly make so much noise but not be moving. This went on for a good while with a pause every now & then,but still, it was always in the same place. I kept looking in that direction trying to figure out what could be making all that noise when I notice a small buck ( 6 pt.-- I think ) heading my way from the direction all the noise was coming from. That buck would walk a while then stop, look back over it's back to where it had come from, take a few nibbles, then do it all over again. He continued doing this untill he was out of sight,and the whole time I was tring to get a shot at hi, but it was just too thick. He was within 20 yards of me for quite a while but there was no way I could pull it off. I should of expected something to be back there as often as he had stopped & looked in that direction but I never gave it a thought .
So now my chance is gone & I turn back around to look in the opposite direction & here comes the biggest buck I've ever seen. He's walking in the other bucks foot steps and I can remember thinking, OH NO, this guy is taking the same route as the other and I'm not going to get a crack at him. Just as that thought hits me,he takes a couple of steps in my direction off of his original line and stops in an opening. I draw and shoot without thinking and he drops right there. I'm in shock already. He never gets back up but does start kicking his hind legs and moves about another 10 yards before he hooks his horns in some saplings and that's where he expires.
I wait about another 10 minutes trying to settle down a little before climbing down. I was really shook up and was very mindful of the possability of falling out of the tree as opposed to climbing down safely. When I get to the ground I'm still shaking and have to take more time to get myself calmed down. Finally I walk to where he's hung up and get him free of the brush and drag him to an area that is open enough to do my next job. By the time I get the tag made out and get him field dressed, it is near dark so I leave him there and take all of my equipment and go to camp. My brother Ron and our friend Todd Fuller are already in camp so the three of us go back to make the drag. As it turns out, I was guide and light bearer and they did all of the hard work.
After the required drying period,the rack was measured by George Block of Eighty Four,Pa. who is an official B&C and P&Y scorer as well as the outdoor writer for the Observer Reporter in Washington,Pa. The official Pope & Young Club gross score was 163 3/8" and the net score was 157 4/8". The conservation officer from Washington Co. aged this buck at 3 1/2 years old and it dressed out at 171 lbs. on a scale.
After all of the excitment had faded a little and I looked back on what had happened to me that day I still couldn't figure out what had caused all of that strange noise. When I was telling the story to the members of our camp who had not been hunting with me on that trip, one of them, Steve Musser, said that he had heard the exact same sounds himself while hunting near his home. The only difference being is that Steve actually saw what was happening. He said that he watched a buck walk up to a small tree and begin to rub it in a normal way but as the buck continued to work on the tree he was getting more & more aggressive. Finally the buck gets the tree bent all the way down to the ground and is whipping it back and forth in the leafs with the tree between his antlers. As Steve explained what he saw and heard I was sure that my mystery had been solved.
I am very proud of this trophy mainly because of the area that he came from. This part of the state is not known for record book bucks and is quite remote with no fields or crops to help grow such a set of horns,only trees. And the best part is that there aren't even any oaks in the area so the deer don't get any nutrition from acorns.
I decided to have a half body mount done on this guy and to have him displayed in a setting as near to the actual area as possible. I had Murphy's Taxidermy of Greensburg do the mounting and he turned out beautiful. I couldn't be more pleased.
Dale Robison
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