Pennsylvania Game News - November 2015 - 17

Right Time, Right Place

T COMES ALONG with hunting as part of a camp. Sometimes you have to give up your
chance at success to lend a hand to someone who's actually had it.
I'd heard the shot. I still was close enough to camp to hear several subsequent blasts
from the horn of a parked pickup. Then, my two-way crackled with my dad's voice, telling
me to get back to camp.
I turned back, reluctantly. But as I reached the springhouse at the edge of the yard, the
woodsmoke rising from a pair of chimneys was the only movement I could see. Inside the
camp, men were seated leisurely around the kitchen table. Soup was warming on the stove.
"What's going on? You told me to get back to camp," I shrugged.
"No," Dad responded, "I said 'I' was back at camp."
As it turned out, the horn blasts were from an accidental brush against a key remote.
And the shot, well, that was anyone's guess. My decision to stay and eat lunch was among
the best I ever made. While finishing a burger - maybe my second - I stared out the picture window at a heavy rain that, as it happened, wasn't falling on me. It froze fast to the
driveway, and later we would hear of hunters stranded at the top of the mountain, unable
to descend on icy roads.
To tell the truth, I thought my only day of bear hunting was done.
Then, the rain let up, and that one hunter who had set out from camp on foot but hadn't
yet returned came back, reporting he'd seen and shot at a bear. He didn't know if he hit it
because he couldn't find its tracks in the snow. With the rain all but stopped and hunters
who had spent the morning elsewhere returning to camp, a plan was hatched to head back
to the site of the shot, near the top of the mountain.
I would not be part of this. On a hike like that, I simply am not in good enough shape to
keep up with the 18-year-old military man who had fired the shot and, especially, his uncle.
But since I was dry, and there would be hunters in the woods, I decided to head out.
When my radio alerted me they'd picked up the tracks, I was surprised how quickly they'd
made it there. Eventually, though, there was just too much talk on that radio for how late in
the day it was getting, and I turned the dial until it clicked to off - another great decision.
Over the chatter, I might not have heard the footfalls, coming from the exact opposite
direction as the hunters tracking the bear.
"Probably some deer," I thought, turning slightly toward the noise with my thumb on
the safe. Then, about 80 yards behind me, a bear popped out of the gully. I pulled the rifle
to my shoulder and saw brush. One or two seconds and a step or two later, the bear walked
clear of any obstruction. She went down hard with the first shot, but gathered herself to
take two others.
I switched the radio back on.
"Bear down!"
As it turned out, it wasn't the only one. With one bear on the pole, a camp emptied the
following morning to pick up the tracks that had been abandoned when darkness fell. And,
at the end of them, was another bear.
It soon would hang alongside the first - the two-bear haul not only making camp history,
but - ironically - tying the total for all of Potter County 40 years earlier.
And in that moment, and this one, I was glad I hadn't hunted in Cameron.

Travis Lau
NOVEMBER 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Pennsylvania Game News - November 2015