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Nov 30, 2009 7:50 pm US/Eastern
Pennsylvania Hunters Take Part In Annual Tradition
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ―
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The crack of hunters' rifles will be heard reverberating through woods in rural Pennsylvania for the next 12 days.
KDKA
The nasty weather did not seem to stop Pennsylvania's deer hunters from climbing into their tree stands or walking the woods - even though the game commission guessed otherwise.
Nearly a million hunters were expected to take to the fields across the state Monday.
The crack of hunters' rifles will be heard reverberating through woods in rural Pennsylvania for the next 12 days.
"I want to get a buck and it's gotta be a big one. I won't shoot a little one," says Pat Conley.
But this first day of Firearms Whitetail season was in a word, miserable, wet and rainy, according to a few hunters.
But the predicted fog and rain didn't dampen the hunters spirits who tempered their passions with patience.
"I can sit in a tree from six in the morning until five at night, but at home I can't sit still for a minute," Tony Logar said.
That patience yielded an 8-point buck for him just south of Waynesburg.
This year the Game Commission is encouraging hunters to send their required harvest reports through this new online system - rather than post cards.
The parking lot at Ron Lenik's deer processing business in Finleyville looked like a pick-up truck convention with new arrivals every couple of minutes. The Leniks will likely dress 1,000 deer over the next few days.
"We make kielbasa, and jerky, and hot sausage, sweet sausage," he said.
But deer hunting is most often about bonding between fathers and sons like George and Jim Bateson of Venetia.
"It's more of a tradition thing we've been doing - especially first day - I'm a big archer and my dad's always been rifleman," he said.
But Jim's father believes the tradition is not being passed on as it had been in the past.
"It's not what it used to be. I think kids got other things to do now, plus the loss of places to hunt and loss of small game and stuff like that," he added.
"It's something that we're always done together, we've always shared together," John Cypher said. He and his twin sons Brandon and Logan, of Canonsburg, plan vacations around deer hunting.
The fee for dressing a deer has not changed from last year - it's about $70. Many of the hunters are donating a portion of their harvest so that families in need can put venison on the table.
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