Pennsylvania Game News - July 2009 - 24

did what Dad had told him. He stayed alert and watched for a buck. As I write this, that was 60 years ago. Allan tells me that he remembers it as though it happened yesterday, every moment of it etched in the archives of memory. The doe had been gone three or four minutes when the buck stepped out from the slashing onto the logging trail and stopped, first looking toward the far end of the trail and then turning his head to face Allan about 75 yards away. As Allan describes it 60 years later, “I put those sights on that buck’s chest right where I though the heart ought to be and squeezed the trigger. He took one jump and went down, thrashing around as though his front legs were tangled in an old blowdown. I thought he was going to get up, so I shot him again.” Down in the slashing, Ernie and I heard the fusillade and stopped dead in our tracks. After that first shot, the next seven ripped out almost as one, then a pause, and then five more. I turned to Ernie. “There’s only one rifle on this whole mountain,” I said, “that will shoot that fast. That’s Allan!” We stood quiet a few minutes, thinking that if Allan had missed, the deer might come straight to us. But after nothing showed up, we continued to work our way uphill in the direc- tion from which the shots had come. With the exception of four years, I hunted deer from 1939 through 1993, and never in all those years — not once — did I ever see another 8-point rack as massive and symmetrical and well shaped as the buck my kid brother Allan shot with Granddad Goble’s Colt Lightning .44-40 on that long-ago morning in the woods at Laquin. And that evening as we drove home, the local game warden, a gentleman known as “Skinny” Zeller, stopped us at a checking station. After looking at the buck draped over the front fender, he asked Dad which one of us had been the lucky hunter. “My youngest boy there in the back,” he replied. “Skinny” Zeller came to the back door of the old ’37 Ford and congratulated brother Allan on a good shot and a fine buck. For the next three successive years, Allan took a nice 8-point buck each year, and in 2006 in New York he took a beautiful 10-pointer. But of all the deer he has taken since that cold December morning in 1947, that 8-point buck taken with the .44-40 was the cream of the crop. I am certain that Granddad Goble would have been proud of the way Allan put that first shot through the heart, and I am just as certain that he would have smiled at all the others. After all, with that first shot, Allan measured up to the task. BY COVER PAINTING NICK ROSATO THE MENTORED YOUTH HUNTING PROGRAM is designed to allow youngsters under 12 years of age to gain hunting experience and learn at an early age about Pennsylvania’s rich hunting heritage. It gives unlicensed youngsters the opportunity to receive one-on-one, hands-on experience and training in the field on the ethics, safety, responsibility, enjoyment and all aspects of the hunting experience by persons who are dedicated to this pursuit. There are some changes to the Mentored Youth Hunting Program this year, so be sure to read the new Digest. What better way to get a youngster out for the first time than hunting groundhogs? It’s warm and a .22 rimfire is the perfect rifle/cartridge combination for a young boy or girl to discover how much fun shooting and hunting can be. 24 GAME NEWS

Pennsylvania Game News - July 2009

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