Pennsylvania Game News - July 2018 - 5

Getting out of the truck and walking
into the woods, fresh turkey scratchings
were spread widely across the flat. A flock
had to have gone through within the past
few hours.
Conrad hunted along a bench on one
side. Shane took the other.
As the two neared the point, with
only an hour of daylight left and nearly a
mile-and-a-half from the truck, they heard
turkeys out in in front of them.
They peered over the edge for a look.
The turkeys spotted them.
Shane got a shot with his .22-250, but
missed, and the flock sailed down into
the hollow.
Given the time, Conrad debated turning back for the truck, but a turkey yelped.
The two hunters separated and set up.
Shane scratched on his glass call, and
three turkeys responded from different
directions.
Conrad spied a turkey, and when it
reached a small opening in some mountain laurel 75 yards away, he squeezed off
a shot from his Savage .22 Magnum rifle.
The turkey disappeared.
Conrad worked his way to the opening
to find the hen lying where he shot it.
"It was a perfect shot through the body,
and 5 p.m. when I put my tag on the bird's
leg," Conrad said. "Now the reality of
possibly taking a 'Renovo Triple Trophy'
was possible."
And to think, just a week earlier, he
hadn't harvested a single big-game animal.

Temperatures were in the high 20s and
it promised to be a sunny morning when
Conrad got situated on a fallen tree where
he could watch a thick patch of mountain
laurel above him, in the area where he
shot his turkey.
JULY 2018

He'd seen a large buck rub there.
He opened his pack and took out shooting sticks, then saw the toy buck his son
had given him.
"I chuckled when I spotted that toy,
having forgotten I had placed it in my
bag," Conrad said.
At 7 o'clock Conrad heard rustling
leaves behind him and cautiously turned
his head. He couldn't believe what he saw.
A buck with a tall rack was making its
way up the hollow toward the thicket, a
mere 50 yards away.
When the deer got behind a tree,
Conrad shifted around and got his .308
positioned on the shooting sticks. The
buck stepped into his sight picture and
stopped. It dropped in its tracks at the shot.
"The closer I got, the bigger the rack
looked," Conrad said. "I counted 10 points
and was dumfounded, realizing it was my
first buck, and that I had completed my
Triple Trophy.
"After tagging the buck, when I opened
my pack to get my knife out to start the
field-dressing, my son's toy buck fell
out. The toy's 10-point rack was similar
in shape to my buck's. The moment was
surreal," Conrad said.
Conrad's buck weighed 158 pounds
on the butcher's scale, and the rack green
scored 126-4/8.
Conrad said the best part of his Triple
Trophy season was showing his son his
buck, and telling him the toy made it
possible.
"Taking the Pennsylvania Triple
Trophy has given me a whole new perspective on hunting," Conrad said. "Never
in a million years did I think I'd get my
first bear, turkey and deer, and all in nearly
the same week, let alone the same year.
"It took preparation, good equipment
and putting in the time," he said.
And maybe a lucky toy deer.
5
Pennsylvania Game News - July 2018

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