Jul 9, 2016 5 min read

Last week I related how as a youngster, I hunted various creatures with my .22 rifle and 16-gauge Iver Johnson shotgun.

Raised in a mining town, Hill Station, it soon became apparent I was going to be a shiftless roamer of the outdoors.

The tale jumps from the young age of 12 to 19, which was done deliberately.

Most most of my previous years before marriage were wasted thinking of or chasing the fairer sex. This would be the only time I neglected the outdoor activities.

That all changed when I met Eileen, who could match me as an outperson.

It was right after marriage that I came into a deer rifle. Owning that .32 Special turned me from thinking small game to yearning for the north and the whitetail deer.

While I dreamed of places like Potter and McKean counties, I had never been there. Strangely enough, my first deer didn’t come from the north but from right here in Washington County. I must admit that buck created an interest in deer that has lasted a lifetime.

It was a nice fall evening in 1966 and I was driving along Linnwood Road where Eileen’s mother lived when I drove up on a very large 10 point buck standing in the middle of the gravel road.

I couldn’t believe my eyes! That did it, and that year a 21-year-old George hunted the area and downed his first of many bucks.

Times were different then and so were hunting methods. Later in life I have often wondered if we were legal or not. When new snow covered the ground my brother-in-law and I would drive slowly along the back roads not looking for deer but instead looking for tracks.

A track would be seen and we would stop with one of us exiting and checking the disturbances in the snow. If they were dog tracks or small deer tracks we moved on. But a big track meant we tried to head the deer off.

One of us would take a stand and the other worked the track. While such a method wouldn’t be profitable today because of posted lands, there were few No Hunting signs or houses around back then. The main reason for using this method was the scarcity of deer.

Our hunting methods back then bring me to the difference in habitat and deer numbers then and now.

In the late 1950s and 1960s, we rarely saw deer in Washington County. Posted ground was not common.

I remember waking up one morning to find the ground covered with about an inch of new snow. I got dressed grabbed my .270 and left my home on Christy Road. I walked that morning from my home to what is now the Springhouse and returned paralleling what is now Munce Road. I never saw a deer track, or for that matter, a human track. That’s just the way it was.

While the downing of that first buck was important, there was another instance that changed things for me.

Eileen and I moved into our first home, an apartment on Vine Street in Canonsburg. After our honeymoon, we arrived at what would be our first home and I was greeted by a short, stocky smiling man who was to be our neighbor.

Strangely, he didn’t introduce himself but instead asked me if I hunted and fished. The fellow was Dave George, whose family is famous for their wrestling prowess. Four of Dave’s brothers are in the Washington-Greene Sports Hall of Fame but Dave is in my personal hall of fame for his ability to catch fish.

It was Dave who took me on my first northwoods hunting trip. Many were the days when we left home with both a rifle and fishing tackle just going with the flow. I learned a lot from Dave.

Back then, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission didn’t stock Canonsburg Lake with trout but we caught bass, channel catfish and crappie there.

In those years the creek flowed green all summer except in an extremely dry fall. Now it rises and turns brown during a hard rain and drops to stagnant pools two days later. The first warm days in March were to go to Little Chartiers Creek and catch suckers or look for snapping turtles.

Deer were everywhere in McKean County. We hunted the area that is now part of the Kinzua reservoir and it was nothing to see 50 deer during a day. There seemed no end to deer up north, just as we thought there was no end to the pheasants down here. I miss those trips up north and I miss the cackle of a ringneck going to roost but that is the way things were.

I was fortunate in also absorbing lessons afield from Eileen’s four brothers and a brother in-law. We hunted together, fished together and laughed together. Now they are gone and I am still learning from a younger generation and hopefully giving back some of what I learned.

George H. Block writes a Sunday Outdoors column for the Observer-Reporter.