Pennsylvania Game News - September 2014 - 14

talk about it give me a call," I replied.
"How about coming over tomorrow
afternoon?" I couldn't believe it. It was
like I had written the script.
I met the very down-to-earth
and gracious Smiths and found that
neighbors were on board, and the
property was much deeper than I
thought. The rear line adjoins a large
wooded no-hunting portion of a state
park, which is clearly marked by
surveyor monuments.
No wonder the Smiths were having
so many problems with deer raiding
the expensive native and exotic ornamental plantings and gardens. Finding
game trails crossing the boundary and
entering the Smiths' lands, I stepped
30 yards away from the line and chose
a tree for my stand. I harvested a buck
and two does that first bow season and
shared the harvest with the Smiths.
"I never met a piece of venison that
I didn't like," claimed Mrs. Smith.
The next September, I visited the
Smiths to ask permission again.
They confirmed that nothing had
changed and I had the run of the property to come and go as I pleased.
But as I was leaving, Mr. Smith
matter-of-factly said, "Oh, yeah. We
cut your tree down."
I smiled and calmly replied, "No
problem," but I kept my disappointment to myself.
I went straight to the spot and stood
at the stump. I guess they had taken it
down to allow more sunlight to reach
the ground. Looking for a replacement
tree, I wandered into an oak and maple
grove. It reminded me of a spot near
Fellsburg in Westmoreland County
where my boyhood friends and I whiled
away autumn afternoons and worried
squirrels, many years ago and hundreds
14

of miles away. My mind was washed
in cherished boyhood memories and I
immediately felt at home. That's when
I found my sacred red maple.
At chest height, Smith's maple is
18 inches in diameter. Its gray trunk is
dappled with blue-green lichens and is
straight up to the first limb at 16 feet.
Just right for my ladder stand's
12-foot-high seat to settle beneath.
The limb extends out above the seat
and helps break up my outline. When
leaves fall en masse, I add strings of
red-orange artificial leaves to help mask
my silhouette. The limb allows perfect
headroom.
I usually shoot and always practice
while seated so I'm accustomed to not
using my legs while drawing a bow. I
keep my bow at an easy-to-draw weight
to accommodate shooting from any
position, something my tournament
archer father taught me.
In a tree, shooting while seated also
is much safer at my age. In the 10 years
of bowhunting from Smith's maple, I've
harvested a dozen-and-a-half deer.
Also, within a 20-minute span and
with a bow, I downed a double-bearded
gobbler and a doe ("An Arrow for
Two," Game News, October 2010).
During the 2011 bowhunting season,
I logged more than 80 hours of sitting
in the maple. It is like a second home.
But beyond the hunting successes
are the equally memorable times that I
sat in the tree and never lifted the bow:
observing nature in its undisturbed
activity and casual social interactions
(bachelor bucks acknowledging status
within the group; a fox in pursuit of a
cottontail and later carrying a chipmunk; hen turkeys feeding peacefully
with a button buck, which then kicked
the last hen filing by as they left; witWWW.PENNGAMENEWS.COM
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Pennsylvania Game News - September 2014

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