Pennsylvania Game News - July 2022 - 53

Hunting Traditions
I
'VE HEARD it said that tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation
of fire.
The rich hunting heritage in Pennsylvania is perpetuated by plenty of traditions,
many of which are handed down from one generation to another.
I got to thinking about some of the hunting traditions I've experienced, or still honor,
in my more than 50 years hunting.
At a deer camp in Tionesta in Forest County in the 1980s, which my dad and I
belonged to for a few years before we got our own camp, one fellow used to exit his
bunk before dawn on the opening morning and yell at the top of his lungs, " Hang
'em high on the meat pole. " It was annoying but certainly became a yearly tradition.
A lot of camps did, and maybe some still do, honor the tradition of cutting off the
shirttail of any hunter who missed a buck.
After coming back to camp at the end of the day one opener and displaying my
displeasure at missing a 4-point, a camp member grabbed the back of my shirt and
pulled out his big sheath knife. He was ready to do the honors until my pleading spared
my expensive Woolrich shirt. In college at the time, I didn't have the funds to replace it.
A yearly tradition of mine during dove season is wearing my " Joe Camel " (Camel
cigarettes mascot from years ago) camouflage T-shirt. My mother got me two of them
with coupons, or some sort of rebate, back in the 1980s. Now, I don't smoke or condone
smoking, but the shirts are pretty cool-looking and are now collectible memorabilia.
Just last year, one shirt gave up the ghost and I had to reduce it to cleaning rags, but
hopefully the other one will last the rest of my hunting days.
It's certainly traditional, but it has to be cold enough, to don my complete Woolrich
red-and-black checkered hunting outfit of 1940s vintage at least once during deer season,
albeit with an outer orange vest nowadays. Every deer hunter, it seemed, had one
in the 1960s and '70s, and it's not known as the " Pennsylvania Tuxedo " for nothing.
Probably the strangest tradition I've encountered over the years is not a Pennsylvania
tradition at all but rather a European one.
I was on an outfitted pronghorn antelope hunt in Montana in 1992, and paired up
with a fellow from Germany. The outfitter's arrangement was that we'd flip a coin to
determine who got the first shot at a buck.
I won and right off the bat shot a buck with 15-inch horns and 6½-inch prongs.
It's the only record-book animal I've taken. Anyway, that afternoon, the German
fellow shot his buck. Before I took some photos of him and the antelope, he insisted
on picking some sage from a nearby bush and placing it in the mouth of the buck. In
his broken English, the fellow said it's the animal's last bite and is hunting tradition
handed down over centuries in Europe.
Who was I to argue with tradition?
Bob D'Angelo
JULY 2022
53

Pennsylvania Game News - July 2022

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