Pennsylvania Game News - September 2011 - 5

and hunkered down. I walked right past him, within 10 feet I’ll bet,” Malesky said. “But I stayed on his tracks and when they brought me back around he busted out of there. That was my first glimpse of a bear in Pennsylvania.” He kept after the bear, even as it led him down the mountain to the Clarion River and back up three times. Malesky finally caught on that the bear was constantly backtracking to wind his pursuer. Still, finding him was not easy. The terrain was steep and the snow made the going slippery and the laurel was so thick that Malesky found himself crawling on many occasions. On one of those, he was worming through some laurel when he thought he saw the bear. He pulled his gun up, but then realized he was looking at a stump. “I thought, geez, I’m never going to see this bear, so I put my gun down and crawled a few more feet and there he was,” Malesky said. He steadied his gun over a laurel branch and shot. He had no immediate idea of the effect of his shot, because the recoil knocked snow all over him. It turns out he hit the bear right behind the ear and dropped it on the spot. It was an 8-year-old male, and the final piece to Malesky’s first triple trophy. “My dad and I couldn’t move it due to the steep ground and the snow, so I went to get some help. I happened to run into
SEPTEMBER 2011

the local WCO and he went back with me. He told me at the truck that every year he’s told by a hunter that the bear the hunter just shot weighs 300 or 400 pounds, and then it turns out to be 150 pounds. He wasn’t sure whether to believe me about the size,” Malesky said. “When we got near the bear he said it might go 250. Then he said maybe 300. When we finally got up to it, he was as excited as I was.” Incredible as that season was, it didn’t take long for Malesky to duplicate it. The very next year Malesky scored his second triple trophy, taking a fall turkey, a 214-pound bear and a 7-point buck on the opening day of the firearms deer season. Amazingly, he almost did it a third time the very next fall. In 1991 he had taken a buck in archery season and then a turkey by the time bear season rolled around. “I got a bear in my sights that year, too, but didn’t get a good shot opportunity at it. So I started following it,” Malesky said. “I chased it for six hours and eventually pushed it to another guy who shot it. It was a big male that weighed 348 pounds.” That was Malesky’s last chance at a triple trophy for a while. He gave up bear hunting for several years, due to changing work schedules and family commitments. By the fall of 2010, though, in part due to the urging of his 77-year-old father, who told him to hunt as much as he could while he had the time and health, he was back to hunting all three species. The season started well. Malesky shot a turkey with his bow. He followed that up by taking a 130-pound bear on the last day of that season. “It was funny, because I’ve only ever seen four bears during the bear season, and I’ve been fortunate enough to shoot three of them,” he said. With a turkey and a bear in hand, friends and family members began pep5

Pennsylvania Game News - September 2011

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