Hunting Archery Duck Deer

Deer hunters kept in fog for opener - High temperatures and rain make for low visibility

Lehigh Valley deer hunters bagged some dandy bucks Monday, despite a one-two punch of thick fog and summerlike temperatures that made for one of the more challenging season openers in recent memory.

Charlie Harris, 31, of Lower Macungie Township, scored on a beautiful eight-pointer at 10:30 a.m. while hunting in South Whitehall Township. He took the deer, which had an inside antler spread of 19 inches, with his Ruger .308 rifle after passing on a smaller seven-pointer earlier in the morning.

”I knew he was pretty big,” Harris said of the buck, which he had photographed on a trail camera during the archery season. ”I spent a little time up in the tree calming down.”

Harris is having the buck — his largest in nearly two decades of hunting — mounted at Bob’s Wildlife Taxidermy in Orefield. His opening-day success capped a tremendous autumn in the woods for Harris, who vowed to do more hunting after he was fired from his manufacturing job in September. Last week, he took a black bear while hunting in Pike County, and he also trapped a coyote recently in Pike County.

”Working 60 hours a week, you don’t have much free time,” Harris said. ”Fortunately, this year, I had plenty of free time.”

Monday also was a record-setting day for Woody Conrad, 43, of Lehigh Township, who scored on his biggest-ever buck when a non-typical 12-pointer walked by him on State Game Lands 168 along the Blue Mountain.

Conrad saw the deer moving through a thicket around 7:30 a.m. After waiting for it to emerge in a clearing, he dropped it with a 50-yard shot from his Marlin .30-30 rifle. The buck was estimated at 31/2 years old and weighed about 150 pounds.

”I’m still pumped up,” Conrad said Monday evening. ”The rack is only about a 14-16-inch spread, but it’s high — really high. It’s neat looking. It’s a one-of-a-kind.”

Shannon Kramer, 14, of Allen Township, took an eight-pointer Monday while hunting with her father, Thomas, on private property in Maxatawny Township, Berks County. She took the buck at 9 a.m. and, after a quick catnap, filled a doe tag at 1 p.m.

”I was sleeping,” said Kramer, a ninth-grade student at Northampton High School. ”[Dad] woke me up and I shot it.”

It was a good day all around for the Kramers. They saw about 15 deer, and Thomas bagged two does as he and his daughter ensured the family freezer will be well stocked this winter.

Most hunters were not as lucky on Monday. Fog and scattered rainshowers reduced early-morning visibility, and field reports from across the region indicate little morning shooting occurred in many places.

Later, after the fog lifted, temperatures soared to an afternoon high of 66 degrees in Allentown. The warm weather caused deer to limit their movements and forced hunters to beat the brush and organize drives in an effort to stir up some action.

Brent Danenhower, 15, of North Whitehall Township, bagged a three-point buck around 10:30 a.m. while pushing deer through a ravine in Lower Macungie Township. It capped a successful morning for the Parkland High School 10th-grader, who also took a doe earlier in the morning. His father, Bob Danenhower, also took a doe during the morning hunt.

Monday’s opening-day excitement was tempered by news that a 13-year-old boy was accidentally shot by his father while the pair were hunting in the Delaware State Forest in Middle Smithfield Township, Monroe County. See the story below.

No hunting accidents were reported Monday in the Lehigh Valley. However, Mike Beahm, the commission’s Southeast Region wildlife conservation officer supervisor, said officers were busy responding to numerous complaints about violations of the safety zone regulation, which requires firearms hunters to stay at least 150 yards away from occupied buildings.

”These new [housing] developments go up and then hunting season comes along and it’s a real shocker to some of these people,” Beahm said.

Although several exceptional bucks were taken across the region, area butcher shops say the overall number of deer killed on the first day was down considerably from years past.

At Hartman’s Butcher Shop in New Tripoli, hunters had brought in about 50 deer as of 5 p.m. — about 10 fewer than on a typical opening day.

”There are a lot more bigger bucks, but the count is lower,” co-owner Carol Hartman said.

Nello’s Specialty Meats in Nazareth had just 42 deer as of 5 p.m., putting them well short of their typical opening-day total of 100. And at Springfield Meat Co. in Springfield Township, Bucks County, manager Keith DeWitt said he won’t know until Wednesday — when many local hunters return from camps in the Poconos and other areas — whether this season will be better or worse than the last.

”Wednesday will be the deciding point,” DeWitt said. ”A lot of guys come home from the mountains, and last year, everybody came home empty-handed.”

Last year, Pennsylvania’s nearly 1 million deer hunters killed 409,320 deer, a 12 percent drop from 2003. The total harvest has declined two years in a row, and many observers expect the downward trend to continue this year.

Many hunters blame the decline on the Game Commission, which six years ago began a deer herd reduction program based on new regulations that made it much easier to kill does but harder to legally harvest bucks.

The two-week, statewide firearms season continues through Dec. 10.

christian.berg@mcall.com
By Christian Berg
Of The Morning Call
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