Pennsylvania Game News - July 2010 - 4

pens to put in an appearance, I might try for him or I might not. But I’ve had loads of adventures while hunting groundhogs, and a few of them even involved Sir Whistle Pig himself. The most memorable close encounter I had came one summer morning when I was walking a dirt road, looking for chucks along the fencerows of a field. I was in an area where there was a buffer patch of foot-high grass about five yards wide between the field and the road. I was watching across a little hollow as I walked when I heard a sharp whistle. I knew that groundhogs were sometimes called whistle pigs, but I’d never actually heard one whistle before. This one was so shrill it sounded like a referee calling a foul on Michael Jordan (heaven forbid). It got my attention immediately, though, and I snapped my head in the direction of the piercing noise. It was coming from the edge of the foot-high grass, out near the field. As I located the groundhog and made eye contact, all you-know-what broke loose. It started to charge — emitting short, penetrating whistles the whole way. It was barreling right for me and I had visions of my legs being torn to shreds by its sharp incisors. It was closing quickly as I stood there dumbfounded, the rifle still on my shoulder. I finally came to my senses and frantically began to backpedal. I was losing the race and preparing for the inevitable when it suddenly disappeared — down its hole, which was on the edge of the high grass right beside the road. It hadn’t been charging at all. It was just heading for safety and wanted to make sure I was out of its way. I could have assured it, though; it had my attention at the first whistle. One summer when I was still in high school I was hunting this same
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area with a buddy. We were both clad in shorts and were walking the dirt roads again, checking out the fencerows. The spot we were hunting had been a working farm/fruit orchard in the past, and there was still evidence of that endeavor. I happened to look over at an old farm dump and there, sticking its head out from under an abandoned sheet of corrugated roofing tin, was a snake. I mentioned it to my buddy, but just as he looked over, the snake disappeared back under the sheet. My buddy then came up with the bright idea to “lift the tin and surprise him.” I wasn’t quite sure that would be such a good idea, because I had no idea what kind of snake it was and I didn’t know who would be the most surprised if we exposed a nest of rattlers or copperheads. I mentioned that to him and he said, “I got a good enough look at it and it was just a black snake. Besides (famous last words), there’s probably just the one under there.” I reluctantly agreed and he outlined his plan, “Let me work my way back through the briars to the back of the sheet and then you can flip it over.” So we laid our rifles on the other side of the road and he painstakingly “snaked” his way back through the briars, meticulously moving branch by branch out of the way as he went. He finally announced that he was in position. I had secured an old 2x4 and had slowly worked it under the outer edge of the tin. When he said “go,” I heaved and flipped the sheet back into the weeds. The sight that greeted us was not at all what we were expecting. Under that sheet were what we later figured were upwards of a dozen or more snakes, all intertwined into a tight ball. Some were black snakes, but a lot of them were not. It was that “not” portion that got our immediate attention. Once the snakes were struck by the sunlight, their level of activity increased noticeably as they started un-balling, un-twining and scattering in all directions. They were moving much too fast for anything even close to a positive ID of what kind
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Pennsylvania Game News - July 2010

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