Hunters bag bucks, does
Deer season kicks off with a bang for someBy Kay Stephens, kstephens@altoonamirror.com
Article Photos
GEESEYTOWN - By mid-afternoon Monday, successful deer hunters were driving into and out of the Gearhart's Custom Meat Shop driveway off Turkey Valley Road.
"We're doing pretty well so far today," owner Tom Gearhart said, standing outside the area where he and helpers start turning deer carcasses into meat packages.
Thirty-one successful hunters had checked into Gearhart's shop by 2 p.m., about the same as last year. The pace, Gearhart said, will pick up around 4 p.m.
"It was cooler this year than it was last year, so I can see them staying in the woods, then coming in," he said.
Pennsylvania's annual 12-day firearms deer season started Monday, with an estimated 750,000 hunters searching for deer. At the end of the day, no hunting-related incidents or accidental shootings were reported in Blair County. Supervisors at 911 centers in Bedford, Cambria and Huntingdon counties called it a quiet day for emergency responders.
By the time the season ends, the Pennsylvania Game Commission estimates that 300,000 deer will be killed. This year's numbers will include an eight-point buck that 30-year-old Nicole Leaper downed Monday morning in Turkey Valley.
"It is my second year of hunting and my first buck," Leaper said proudly.
The medical assistant, who took a day off from work to go hunting, said she had to control the excitement of her success. Other deer were in the area, and she wanted her 12-year-old stepson, Hunter Leaper, to have a chance.
"They took off as soon as I was getting ready to shoot," Hunter Leaper said.
Gearhart's Meats will process Leaper's deer into hamburger, steaks, roasts and bologna.
Some hunters, Gearhart said, are asking him to add up to 50 percent beef to their ground venison. That makes it taste less like venison, he said, but increases the quantity.
"They've asked before, but it just seems like there's more asking this year," Gearhart said. "It's probably the economy."
Paul Clark, 39, of Altoona said he asked for "pure venison" and two sticks of bologna to be made from his 11-point deer. He was hunting with his son, Dylan, 9, who spotted the buck from a tree stand on the Scotch Valley side of Canoe Creek. He said he wanted to give Dylan a chance to shoot, but the buck spotted them and began running, so Clark shot.
"Dylan can't shoot a running deer, but he was excited," Paul Clark said. "I had to keep telling him to calm down."
Hollidaysburg surgeon Dr. Augusto Delerme was in the woods, too, with his son, Gus, daughter-in-law Nilda, of Cranberry Township, and grandson, Gabe. They arrived for Thanksgiving and stayed for deer season.
Delerme said he has been successful on hunting trips outside the state.
"But I've never gotten a deer in Pennsylvania," Delerme said.
As of Monday, that's not the case for his 23-year-old grandson, a graduate student at North Carolina State University. Gabe Delerme shot a doe spotted by his mother, who accompanied her family hunters for the first time.
"No, I didn't carry a gun," Nilda Delerme said. "You really don't want me carrying a gun."
So when she saw a deer, all she could do was flap her glove-covered hand up and down.
"My son spent all day Sunday telling me we had to be really quiet, we can't make noise, not to be loud," she said. "But this has been great today. ... I had no idea it was so much fun."
Mirror Staff Writer Wendy McCardle Zook and the Associated Press contributed to this story.
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Tuna83
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12-02-09 2:40 PM
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Thats cold mocus1 , thats real cold.
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Jenkins
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12-01-09 4:44 PM
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There used to be 1.5 million hunters on the first day, now it has dropped to 750,000. Wow wee wow wow wooo.
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Chuxspringer
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12-01-09 8:13 AM
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Maybe because now it is a hunt not a slaughter. LOL
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orwell
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12-01-09 7:43 AM
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I don't know if it was the lousy, strange weather or just fewer deer out there, but my group of family and friends had 10 hunters out all day in several different locations. Only one of us even saw any deer, and we all came back empty-handed. I heard less shooting than any first day I can remember.
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