By BERNIE HORNICK
TIRE HILL — Buck hunters awoke before dawn Monday to a tough slog, fighting steady rains and fog in conditions that kept the deer low.
“I think the weather’s going to play a big role,” said Adam Thomas – owner of a self-named meat processing plant in Tire Hill – on the first day of Pennsylvania’s rifle deer season.
“Sixty percent of last year, about 150 (carcasses) today, that’s what I’m guessing.”
He said snow in 2008 – making the trophies-to-be easy to track – pushed the numbers up last year. Thomas charges $45 for a basic deer butchering.
By 11 a.m. Monday, only a few bucks had been brought in: One was small and another had only half a rack.
Yet one was a nice 10-point felled by Bob Gawel of Johnstown. He could not be reached Monday.
Rich Weaver, federal aid supervisor for the Pennsylvania Game Commission southwest region, said by 3:30 p.m. he had two reports of “hunting-related shooting incidents.”
They were both self-inflicted and neither was fatal.
An accident in Indiana County wounded a 10-year-old girl and her father, while a hunter also was shot in Westmoreland County.
Across the Laurel Ridge, hunters walked the mountains, hunkered down behind trees or kept vigil from tree stands for as long as they could before retreating to get warm and dry.
“It’s pretty wet and miserable,” said Dave Wiltrout of Somerset, who returned to his vehicle parked on Route 271 to change into dry clothing.
“They’re not moving. They’re bedded down; I would be too,” he said, and laughed.
He said he heard a couple of shots but saw no deer himself.
Wiltrout also planned to hunt today, if necessary, and Saturday.
Jeremy Shoff, 29, of Fayetteville, N.C., walked a mountain road in Conemaugh Township, Somerset County, deciding where to enter the woods.
“It was pretty cold,” he said.
The Benscreek native was trying his luck at the hunt for the first time in nine years.
Joe Blalock of Brownstown had enough by 9:30. While he’d heard some shots, he decided to get out of the weather and planned to return in the afternoon when the rains quit.
“Everybody got soaked and that probably discouraged some people,” Weaver said.
“When your visibility gets cut down to 50-60 yards it makes it tough,” Weaver said from his office in Bolivar. “A deer can slip through pretty easily.”
While Thomas found business not as brisk as he’d hoped Monday, the earlier archery season was a bull’s eye.
He cut up 500 deer, an archery record for his shop and well above last year’s record of 350. Thomas said the numbers were up this year because crossbow hunting is now allowed.
The Associated Press reported that an estimated 750,000 rifle hunters were expected to take to Pennsylvania’s woods and fields in search of deer.
The season runs through Dec. 12.
About 85,000 whitetail were expected to be killed on opening day. The Pennsylvania Game Commission estimates that 300,000 deer will be shot over the season.
The game commission says hunters harvested an estimated 335,850 deer in the state’s 2008-09 seasons – 122,410 antlered and 213,440 antlerless deer. That’s up 4 percent from the prior season, The AP reported.
The game commission wants hunters to file reports through the agency’s new online system at pgc.state.pa.us.
Staff writer Patrick Buchnowski contributed to this story.
