Always on the Mark: Skilled hunter trying to recover from auto accident
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Archery season will be upon us before you know it, and a lot of us don't know how to hunt with bow and arrows except to buy a tree stand and sit in it waiting for a deer to come by. That's one of the ways to go about it, but I know a man who is just about the most successful still-hunter I know, and I know a lot of them, including myself.
This man has perfected still-hunting to the almost perfect extent. He can and has walked up on deer. I'll tell you his name a bit later.
To him, still-hunting is an art, not just a slow walk in the woods. It takes him an hour to hunt 50 yards. He's hunted with me in Armstrong County for the last five years and has bagged a nice buck each one of those five years. I haven't done that.
His fastest pace is to take 10 minutes to travel 2 yards. It's uncanny to see him do it, and I have seen it.
Two years ago, he bagged a 10-pointer by traveling at that pace when he ran into the buck that was coming walking toward him. His shot was true, and there was venison in that home that year.
According to this man, most hunters think they are going at a slow pace as they still-hunt, but they are going twice as fast as he would ever thing of moving. He still hunts in the roughest swamps and laurel patches you ever saw, but he'll get his deer most times. His extraordinary pace that he maintains is quite difficult for most of us to master. We start out slowly enough but pretty soon, without realizing it, our pace has picked up, and we are going much too fast to ever see a buck that hasn't first seen us.
He never lets his jacket or pants be scratched by brush. If he comes to something in his path he simply lifts it over his head and never emits a sound.
He practices his still-hunting technique often, seeing how close he can sneak to a songbird in the yard or a neighbor's dog snoozing on their porch.
All of this specialized walking takes patience and he practices that too. At the end of the day, he is filled with sights and sounds of wild creatures he spotted that day.
Unfortunately, that man was recently in a horrid car crash and was seriously hurt. More injuries than I wish to describe here, but he is going to have to learn to walk all over again.
He loved to take kids into the woods and teach them the basics. Now someone will have to perhaps help him. That man, I am proud to say, is my son Mark. I just got back from a week's visit to the research hospital in Kansas City where he has been for several weeks. They will soon transfer him to a rehab facility.
Deer hunting will probably be out for him this coming year. I told him that I will not be going in to the deer wood again until he can go with me. That is the only way I know to honor one of Pennsylvania's greatest deer hunters. Pray for him, please. He has a very long and tough road ahead of him but he is a tough, determined man.