Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 26

The Stories Behind Scars
HE FIRST shotgun truly mine was a gift from my dad's dad, pulled from a closet
about this time of year, near the end of my first season afield, very much to my
amazement. I'd never known him to hunt or shoot.
Then again, he never shared much, dribbling out mostly vague answers unless
really pressed.
In bits and pieces, I came to know that he grew up on farms, though never the
same one for long. His father's death sent him and his brothers to a gloomy orphanage
where one died.
His grandparents rescued him, providing a few years of boyhood mixed with man's
T
work, plowing fields behind draft horses. Then they died, too, and at 14, in the Great
Depression, he was homeless, sleeping in fields on rough nights, in barns for traded
labor on good ones. War in the South Pacific followed.
His 12-gauge Savage, I learned from the company, was manufactured in 1956. Did
my grandfather buy it new or second-hand? Was it a tool for hunting or for pest control
on his own farm? And where, exactly, did the ragged, thumbnail-deep, 3/4-inch-long
gouge in its pistol grip come from?
I have other scarred gear. I remember how each pice earned its imperfections.
There's the scratch in my lever-action .30-30's stock. I put it there one December
day buck hunting. A Greene County morning produced plenty of deer, but none with
antlers. So I climbed a steep pastured hill, intending to tuck myself into the woods of
an oak bench crisscrossed with deer trails and stay until dark. Along the way I passed
an ancient cast-iron bathtub used to collect rainwater for beef cattle and encountered
a barbed wire fence.
Kneeling down to slide my gun through before crossing myself, I didn't notice the
rusty strand hidden in high grass. It notched the rifle's stock.
Sliced partially through is the leather of one knife sheath. My wife's nonhunting
uncle gave me the blade, won at some fundraiser. I made good use of it field dressing
a Somerset County buck, then nearly eviscerated the sheath trying to put it away.
More severely disfigured were the leather boots I wore hunting in the long-drained
reservoir - the " Rez, " we called it - on another property. Originally smooth and shiny,
coated in mink oil, the boots punched through snarly, gnarly greenbrier patches thick
with cottontails and the occasional ringneck. By season's end - and for several others
long after - they were deeply slashed willy-nilly, as if attacked by a drunken barber
armed with a straight-edge razor.
All that makes me ponder the gash, edges smoothed with time, on my shotgun.
Often, at the end of another season, I run my fingers over the furrow and wonder
about its backstory.
Answers never come, and never will.
Bob Frye
26

Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025

Contents
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - Cover1
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - Cover2
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - Contents
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 2
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 3
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 4
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 5
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 6
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 7
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 8
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 9
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 10
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 11
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 12
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 13
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 14
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 15
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 16
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 17
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 18
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 19
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 20
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 21
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 22
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 23
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 24
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 25
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 26
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 27
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 28
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 29
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 30
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 31
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 32
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 33
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 34
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 35
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 36
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 37
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 38
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 39
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 40
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 41
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 42
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 43
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 44
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 45
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 46
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 47
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 48
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 49
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 50
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 51
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 52
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 53
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 54
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 55
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 56
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 57
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 58
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 59
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 60
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 61
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 62
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 63
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - 64
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - Cover3
Pennsylvania Game News - February 2025 - Cover4
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