Pennsylvania Game News - March 2013 - 18

to work hard and not overheat. I
grabbed my deer dragging sled from
the truck and headed back in.
Once I got back to the deer, I
loaded her on the sled and started
back out. I had used the sled once,
several years earlier, and like then
it was proving again that it was
worth the money it cost. A deer
cart would have been useless in
those thick woods, and without
it the ﬂat dry ground would have
made the job three times as hard.
As I chugged along, I had plenty
of time to think. I realized that
when I reached the truck I would
have walked nearly four miles. It
was a ¾-mile trip one way to the
stand.
A lot of guys these days would
shake their heads and tell me I
was crazy for walking that much,
and deﬁnitely crazy for dragging a
deer that far. However, in addition
to taking a deer, the walking back
in held other beneﬁts. During my
trips in and out of my area and
during my short time on stand, I
never saw another hunter. Back
at the road where I had parked, I
saw two other vehicles and met a
couple of hunters wondering where
they should go. Other than that, a
couple of shots way down the ridge
was it as far as hunting pressure. I
was able to experience a real quality hunt.
As I drove away from the Game
Lands I kept wondering what that
big doe weighed. I remembered
driving by a store on the way home
that had a certiﬁed scale for weighing and selling coal. I stopped there
and the people were kind enough
to let me weigh my deer. Field18

dressed, she weighed 140 pounds. I was
really impressed. Years ago I had seen a
lot of 1½-year-old bucks weighed, and
they generally went around 110-115
pounds.
When I skinned the deer it was
obvious why. I had never seen a deer
with so much fat on it. Not only did a
thick layer cover her back straps, but it
also extended down onto her ribs. Even
though she was from the big woods of
SGL 57, with no croplands around, she
had been eating well.
There is an obsession these days
with big bucks. They are often referred
to as trophy deer. That description is
true, but in my opinion it isn’t always
because of their big antlers. It is the degree of challenge they offer that makes
them trophies. Big bucks are usually
the biggest, oldest and wariest animals
to outsmart in any given area. If you
think about it, in this manner any deer
hunt that offers a greater than normal
challenge can result in a trophy. It’s
the degree of difﬁculty that makes it so.
Maybe it was taken by still-hunting or
tracking, or the sporting arm used could
have been a longbow or a ﬂintlock. It is
the challenge and the accomplishment
that really matter.
I thought about this that evening as
I sat at home and reﬂected on my day. I
realized that in addition to being fortunate enough to have a nice doe in the
freezer, my hunt had been unique. Even
though I didn’t see the buck I was after,
I got a large doe; bigger than any other
I had ever harvested. I also thought
about the effort and persistence that
had gone into ﬁnally ﬁnding a way into
that area, and the hard work of getting
the deer out of there. As I pondered this
I realized that in my way of thinking
she was, indeed, a trophy.
GAME NEWS
Pennsylvania Game News - March 2013

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