Pennsylvania Game News - May 2010 - 10

was a young boy with a rifle between his legs, the barrel pointing up toward the windshield. I figured these guys were roadhunting, so I just stayed in the woods and decided to watch them for a while. “The truck and its occupants cruised down Creek Road at about 5 miles per hour. I could see through my binoculars that the guys in the back of the truck were standing up and scanning the fields on both sides of the road with binoculars. They went about a quarter mile, made a sharp right turn onto Turtle Road, went about 50 feet and then came to an abrupt stop. Then the two guys in the back of the truck jumped out. One guy ran down the road and jumped across a ditch into a 10-foot wide strip of trees that stretched down the east side of Turtle Road. The other guy ran up to the front of the passenger side and hurried the young boy out of the truck, and then they both jumped up onto the bank. They were less than 20 feet off of Turtle Road, and there was a house less than 40 yards away, across Creek Road to their left. These two were probably 30 feet from the intersection of Creek and Turtle roads. Rollo stayed in the truck, with the passenger door wide open. “Then the shooting started. The young boy shot four times, dropping a doe in the field, and the guy farther down Turtle Road — and less than 15 feet from the roadway — shot a doe that was out in the field. I was flabbergasted that these guys would shoot so close to the house, and in plain daylight. I watched them run out into the field to get their deer, and then I got into my truck and left. I don’t want to get any more involved in this, please.” After verifying that it was, indeed, Rollo Toady’s vehicle, by checking the vehicle registration, we got out of our vehicle on Turtle Road and started
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searching for evidence. We saw two sets of boot prints in the snow, one larger than the other. They led up the embankment and into a clump of trees adjacent to the house the witness told us about; they’d stood less than 15 feet from the roadway. The tracks continued out into a field where we found a gut pile from a deer. We searched quite some time for cartridge cases near the clump of trees, on the embankment, ditch and roadway, but to no avail. While Kevin continued to search for empty cartridge cases I walked down Turtle Road and found another set of boot prints in the treeline where the second individual had allegedly shot from; he’d been less than 20 feet from the road. I searched the area but was unable to find any spent cartridge cases in the high grass and snow. I followed the boot tracks about 100 yards out into the field and found a gut pile from a second deer. While out in the field, I saw Kevin motioning for me to return. I gathered evidence from the gut pile and walked back down to the road. Kevin said, “Come over here, I want to show you something.” Just behind my vehicle, on the other side of the road and down a steep embankment in the creek, was a big doe with just the back straps cut out; she was not gutted. What a waste. I have so many needy families that could have made good use of this animal. With much huffing and puffing, we got the deer up out of the creek, up the 10-foot embankment, and onto my deer rack. We continued patrolling the area, trying to locate Rollo and his comrades. As it was approaching lunchtime, we thought they might return to Rollo’s truck. We’d just turned around in a gas well landing site when we saw three vehicles coming down Creek Road — one car and a small SUV followed by a pickup. In the open bed of the pickup, with the tailgate down, were four orange-clad hunters clutching their rifles, and two other hunters were in the cab of the truck. When the hunters in the bed saw us they became
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Pennsylvania Game News - May 2010

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