Pennsylvania Game News - April 2009 - 50

A SPECIAL BOND develops between us and the land we hunt. The land becomes part of us, part of our past, part of our history. This hilltop overlooking the Delaware River will always hold a special spot in this hunter’s heart and mind. People make history. Time passes for other things, but then it’s called geology, ecology, climatic records, evolution, etc. We make what we call “history” by living it. History has to have a place to happen. When something occurred that we think is worth remembering, we often set aside the site or take special note of the place. Why? Because history is just a memory, our own or our society’s or all mankind’s. Memories can’t be seen or felt or smelled or tasted. They’re locked in the mind. What we do have that remains is the place where history happened. Another type of Tour When friends and relatives who share my love of hunting come to visit, I take them on a local history tour. Like the rest of the state, my home region has its own significance to Pennsylvania’s past. My visitors get to see all the standard sites and museums, but they get another type of history tour, too. Driving along the country roads around here, I slow down and tell my passengers: “Right up on that hill there, that’s where I shot that big one-horn buck with my bow. I mean the one antler was big. The other side was broken off. If it’d had two, I’d have gotten the deer mounted.” And, “See that good deer trail that 50 comes across the road here, off that steep slope? I found a real good scrape in bow season on the next bench up. It was the last week of the season, but I Bob Steiner couldn’t hunt it because I had to go out of town. My husband was staying home, so I insisted he hunt it, and he did the next afternoon. It was raw and blustery, but a gnarly-racked buck came into the scrape and my husband got him. I’ll show you the antlers when we get back home.” My passengers dutifully crane their necks to look at the muddy deer trail and stare up the incline into the grapevinedraped woods, as if expecting to see the reenactment of their host’s history. The car speeds up again, bouncing a little on the rough pavement and then even more when the road turns to dirt. “Isn’t this the spot where we parked on that opening morning of doe season years ago, in all that snow?” one of my visitors asks. “Yeah, this is it. The snow was so deep we followed in a line to get back to where the hill dropped off. We all got deer that day, I remember. It was a wonder, with all that snow, that the deer were moving at all. The hunters sure weren’t.” We all nod at that, recalling the historic day when the group “limited out” and we returned home feeling like heroes. A couple of the young hunters shot their first deer that day, which makes the place even more memorable. We drive on. As we go, I realize the scenery is mostly anonymous, without a GAME NEWS

Pennsylvania Game News - April 2009

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