Can It Be, Four Years Already

Can It Be ... Four Years Already?

By Rob Hilliard

Yeah, I know that the last Ohio Valley Outdoors you received was the magazine’s fourth anniversary issue. But “In the Public Domain” didn’t appear in that first issue back in the summer of 2001, so this column is celebrating its anniversary just a little bit later than everyone else. That’s probably appropriate; I always tend to lag a bit behind the rest of the crowd.

It doesn’t seem possible that it’s been three whole years since I first wandered over to the OVO booth at the Hookstown Fair to see what all the fuss was about. But then again, time moves quickly – nearly as quickly as Dave Freeman, the publisher of the magazine, who offered me a crack at this column within a week or two of that first meeting. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Before taking a look back at some of the highlights and lowlights of the first three years of “In the Public Domain,” I first need to take the time to thank Dave, Ray Ward, Etta Pettijohn, and all the other fine folks who have worked to put this magazine together since I’ve been here. Had it not been for their willingness to experiment with an unknown writer in the first place – not to mention giving me unlimited space to wag my figurative tongue, tolerating my third-grade level photo skills, and allowing the occasional milliseconds-before-the-deadline column submission – I wouldn’t have any excuse for cruising around the Tri-State area and stopping to hunt at any spot that strikes my fancy. Or, at the very least, the IRS wouldn’t let me deduct that mileage as a business expense.

So with the preliminaries out of the way, let’s spend a little time reminiscing about the good, the bad, and the really, really hideous. Recognizing that this is the Deer Issue, let’s focus on the best and worst of chasing whitetails.

Best Public Land Spot For You to Shoot a Big Buck – Let’s face it, this is what everyone in the Ohio Valley really wants to know: Where can I go on public land to kill a big buck? Although there are a number of contenders in this category, the winner here has to be the Highlandtown Wildlife Area in Ohio. At the time the column on Highlandtown WMA first appeared in 2003, it said that “archery season for deer [is] one of the best bets for hunter success at Highlandtown,” and “that the food plots and open habitat keep the deer well fed.” Tom Henry, Assistant Wildlife Management Supervisor from the DNR Division of Wildlife, was also quoted as saying, “I’ve seen some pretty nice bucks come out of Highlandtown.” Apparently that information was fairly accurate because just a few months later, OVO ran an article in Ray Ward’s “For the Record” column on three generations of a local family who regularly take monster bucks from the Highlandtown WMA in archery season.

Honorable mention in the big buck category goes to Pennsylvania’s SGL 117. As the PGC’s Information and Education Officer Mel Schake said in that column, “Washington County [where SGL 117 is located] is one of the top deer producers in the state, year in and year out. There definitely are some nice big deer out in that country.” Further evidence was provided by my good friend and sometime softball teammate, Ed Brophy, a local hunter who has spent over 20 years stalking game at SGL 117 and taken at least 10 bucks here. A couple of those bucks are now hanging on the wall in his house.

Best Spot to Fill Your Doe Tag – This is a tough one. Highlandtown, of course, has a decent deer population, as do a few other spots we’ve visited over the past three years: Fernwood State Forest and Brush Creek Wildlife Area in Ohio; Little Castleman’s Run Lake Wildlife Management Area in West Virginia; and SGLs 285, 117, and Buzzard Swamp in Pennsylvania. I think the best spot, though, and the one where I most consistently saw does was at SGL 232 in Washington County, Pennsylvania.

I can still clearly remember the first morning that I went out to SGL 232 for Pennsylvania’s early muzzleloader season. I hiked up a steep hillside trail and stepped through a break in a thin band of trees, only to glimpse a huge herd of deer standing in the exact spot where I intended to hunt. The only problem was that legal shooting was still nearly an hour away and I could only make out dark blurs as the deer milled about in the field. Nonetheless, Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) land manager Doug Dunkerly was exactly right when he stated that the new tract of land acquired by PGC in Washington County and added to SGL 232 was “loaded with deer.”

As a side note, I should mention that SGL 232 is also the best public land destination for turkey hunting that I have ever encountered. As that same column noted, “SGL 232 has turkeys like my lawn has dandelions. There were turkeys in the fields, in the woods, on the roads, even perched on a steel power line tower.” I have yet to see another spot that can match the quality turkey habitat of SGL 232, nor the sheer quantity of birds. Now, if anyone out there knows of such a spot . . .

Best Spot For You to Archery Hunt for Deer – This one is a tie, with both of the winners located in Ohio. Choice 1A would be the Highlandtown Wildlife Area, for all the reasons listed above. It’s like hunting the nicest farm you know of, assuming the farmer took the time and trouble to manage his crops just so the deer could eat them.

Choice 1B might be a little bit surprising. It’s Fernwood State Forest, a spot not necessarily famous for its quality deer hunting. However, as Ohio Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Research Technician Jeff Westerfield said in the column on Fernwood, “If you like hunting edges” (and what bowhunter doesn’t) “[Fernwood] would be a great place” to hunt deer. To that end, Westerfield added, “For bowhunting, it’s a tremendous area. Jefferson County, as a whole, will put out some decent-sized bucks. There’s no doubt they’re on [the state forest], it’s just taking the time to find them. If I had to pick one thing [to do at Fernwood], it’d be bowhunting for deer.”

Worst Spot for Me to Go Deer Hunting – Tie, every place that I’ve gone deer hunting on an OVO assignment. Although there are explanations for my inability to bag a deer while preparing a column – unfamiliarity with the area, limited time in the field, etc. – this streak has become more than just an annoyance over the past three years. It’s not that I haven’t seen any deer, either. I’ve just found a way to mismanage, misfire, or just plain miss, every opportunity that came my way.

As Exhibit #1, I offer up this account from the column on SGL 232:

“When I stepped from the truck at . . . the new game lands, a driving rain - the kiss of death for flintlock hunters - splashed my cheeks. Then, as I walked toward my spot in an open field perched atop a hill, I spooked a small group of deer that ran off ahead of me. Not a great start to the day, but I was sure things would get better.”

“By 8 AM, I had missed a doe. The circumstances of the miss aren’t important (OK, I just don’t want to talk about it), but what followed taught me something else about pioneer life. The deer stood staring at me as I tried to reload my rifle. Now, I’ve read that some early frontiersmen were able to reload their rifles in the time it took them to run across a 100-yard field. They needed this skill when battling the hostile Indians of the Ohio Valley. But the way I stumbled, fumbled, and bumbled my way through reloading while facing down a deer, which was unlikely to charge me and attempt to bash my brains in with a tomahawk, gave me a profound new respect for the woodsmen’s skill.”

“Early in the pre-dawn of the next Saturday (the last day of the early muzzleloader season), I was back in the same spot . . . Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but by 8 AM I had missed a doe. When damp powder (@#$%&* rain!!) caused a misfire on my first attempt, a 40-yard standing shot turned into 90-yard running shot that I missed badly. The flintlock rifle that I was so proud to carry a week ago was only a few shaky seconds away from being wrapped like a Christmas bow around the nearest oak tree. An hour later, another flash-in-the-pan misfire was enough to send me back to the truck in disgust.”

There’s always the next three years, I guess.

Worst Spot for Any Other Kind of Hunting – Although we’ve had readers vehemently disagree with me on this point since this column ran, SGL 189 in Beaver County, PA gets my booby prize. As I wrote in that column, “in nearly 20 visits to the game lands, stretched out over almost seven years, I HAVE NOT ONCE SEEN A LIVING GAME ANIMAL THERE.” If you have, in fact, seen – or even somehow managed to shoot – a game animal of one sort or another at SGL 189, I salute you. However, in deference to my empty gamebag, I stick by my previous assessment that it looks good, but hasn’t produced. SGL 189 is, as the Beach Boys once sang, a No-Go Showboat.

Best Place to Catch West Nile Virus or Other Mosquito-Borne Diseases – Orwell Wildlife Area, outside of Orwell, OH, is a lock for this one. If you decide to hunt these mature mast-bearing woods during deer season, keep in mind that while squirrel hunting there with my daughter, Rachel, two Septembers ago, I had grave concerns that she might actually be lifted up and carried away by the swarms of humming bloodsuckers. These normally somewhat fragile insects were so powerful at Orwell that they were able to attack us in strafing waves, despite a steady downpour of rain that should have knocked them to the muddy ground. We didn’t see any squirrels that day. And, for some reason, no return trip has yet been scheduled.

Place Most Likely to Require an Ark to Drag Out Your Deer – Another easy one: the Tionesta Research Natural Area. During a muzzleloader hunt on the Tionesta tract last fall, it rained so hard for so long that I nearly drowned just from the rain pouring off the bill of my cap. This snippet from the column on my Tionesta travels captures a bit of my agony: “Perhaps 15 minutes later, the rain decided it had had enough of preliminary overtures and started to pour in earnest. Without a puff of wind, it cascaded like a waterfall over the entire forest. This did little to ease my agitation.”

As an added bonus, the daylong deluge washed away any chance I had of finding a blood trail from the deer I had shot earlier that morning. It was a bad day all the way around.

I don’t know whether it always rains like that at the Tionesta, but I won’t be going back soon to find out. At least not without a life jacket and a rubber ducky.

Worst Photo Accompanying a Column – While there have been any number of blurry shots of my thumbs, forefingers, and other assorted digits that had to be digitally corrected, the most hideous photo to appear anywhere in OVO magazine has to be the mug shot of yours truly that has flown at the top of this column for the past two years. While there’s nothing that anyone aside from a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon can do for my looks, we’ve at least upgraded the photo, starting with this issue, to include a little blaze orange. It is, after all, a hunting column.

And a pretty fun column, too, or at least it has been for me. I certainly hope that it has been for you too, and that you’ll keep coming back. It’s always more fun to take someone along for the ride.