Jan 17, 2026 5 min read

By Dave Bates

Contributing writer

I was lying in bed one morning contemplating if I should arise or laze about in relative unproductiveness. Retirees have that option. Being one of those particularly cold mornings, I considered giving laziness a second chance when it struck me that some of my best days afield have been spent in less than ideal weather conditions. It reminded me of one of the best and worst hunting days I have experienced which occurred on a bitterly cold day of seven degrees.

I was a newly hired English teacher in Sandy Lake as well as the athletic director and baseball coach. The job was all-consuming and allowed for little free time, Saturday mornings being the exception. My wife worked Saturdays til 1 p.m., affording me the privilege of hunting with my pal Kevin nearly every Saturday of the small-game season. He was our district’s speech pathologist and about 25 years my senior so it was a lot like hunting with my dad. Kevin knew things. I listened, paid close attention and eventually received quite the woods education.

I more or less invited myself to hunt with him. Kevin wasn’t all that enthused but rather gave in to my pestering requests to accompany him. I was just beginning a love affair with bird hunting and my first German Shorthaired Pointer, Gertrude. Kevin kept a brace of really good beagles, making for quite the mixed bag. We frequented mostly Mercer and Venango counties with the occasional foray to McKean.

Prior to the 2017-2018 season, Pennsylvania had a split grouse season that came back in after Christmas and lasted well into January. Traditionally, we would pursue pheasants first. Once the leaves came off we’d chase grouse until shortly after Christmas, then switch gears and begin chasing bunnies until the end of season. Throw in an occasional duck, goose, squirrel, fall turkey hunt and this added up to more than a little small-game hunting each season. Keep in mind there was also a complete white-tail archery season followed by black bear and then rifle deer season. We embraced them all. How I remained married remains a mystery.

Kevin guarded his hunting spots fiercely, asking if I knew of any places we could go? I told him we had just moved to a farm near Barkeyville and that we could run some rabbits there. So much so that Kevin invited me along to hunt some of his secret spots in the weeks to follow. We arrived at one of his Holy Grail locations on a morning where the thermometer barely cleared the zero mark; the kind of cold that caused your spittle to freeze before hitting the ground. There had been a light snowfall the day prior and the blanket coating quickly froze in place causing loud cracking and crunching with each step. As we exited the truck, Kevin was worried about the health of his dogs and flatly stated, “I’m not putting my dogs down in this stuff. We can take a walk if you like but we’ll be wasting our time.”

The area we were hunting was an equestrian park where riding and jumping was taught. A small stream meandered through the property and adjacent to the tributary, hurdles were erected, the three-rail kind of affairs one sees in fox hunting. The entire compound barely occupied five acres, hardly inspiring confidence.

Scarcely a dozen steps from that first obstacle, a pair of rabbits exploded from cover. I rolled them both with the right and left barrels, respectively, from the little 28-gauge side by side I had recently purchased from Kevin. As I was placing the duo in my vest, another took off and I anchored it as well. I was 3-for-3 in less than five minutes. I looked up to see Kevin grinning from ear to ear. He shouted, “There goes another one!” Assuming he was teasing me, I casually pivoted and was nearly run down by a rather large woods rabbit erupting from the overhanging stream bed. Bingo! Hasenpheffer was definitely on the menu that evening. I apologized to Kevin for shooting so quickly but he assured me that all the shots lined up in my favor and he seemed genuinely glad for me.

Now is where one would assume this glorious day of gunning would end but not so. I am not proud of this antic, but I had not done much rabbit hunting to this point in my life and for some reason I was confused as to the number of bunnies in a limit, thinking six, not four. I was incorrect and soon to be quite embarrassed. I had never illegally harvested more game than I was entitled to in my entire life and have never done so since. Most days I was happy to harvest anything. However, on the way back to the truck I took two more singles in two shots making it 6-for-6 in less than an hour. So proud of this once in a lifetime accomplishment I began arranging the harvest on the tailgate for a trophy photo. Kevin cleared his throat and offered, “I wouldn’t do that.” Thinking he was jealous of my newfound marksmanship skill set, he offered up his mini game digest. It was turned to the page with small game bag limits. He said, “I’ll take my two so you don’t end up in jail tonight.” I asked him why he didn’t say anything and he responded, “You were having so much fun, I simply lost count.”

The ride home was conspicuously quiet. For the rest of the season, every time I looked Kevin’s way he would grin and give me the fourth quarter sign. Thirty years later, he still won’t let me live it down.

Dave Bates writes a weekly outdoors column for the Observer-Reporter. He can be reached at alphaomegashootingsolutions@gmail.com