Frank Sojak
fsojak@tribdem.com
—
Dean Dietrick Sr., Tom McConnell and Noah Paronish are passionate about the outdoors and want to get others excited about it also.
The three, along with other volunteers, will be answering questions about hunting and fishing during the annual Apple Cider Festival and Craft Show from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Oct. 3 at Prince Gallitzin State Park near Patton.
The booth where they will be working is being sponsored by HuntingPA.com, a social networking website for hunters.
Going hunting and fishing or talking about both sports is only part of being a sportsman, they said.
Taking care of the environment is a large part of the equation, the three Cambria County men said.
They are planning a project next year with volunteers who communicate on HuntingPA.com and CampingPA.com, a social website for campers, to clean up the shoreline of the lake at Prince Gallitzin State Park.
Last month, both websites sponsored a project to pick up trash on St. Lawrence Road, the five-mile-long route that connects Patton and the village of St. Lawrence.
“We’re doing this to shine a more positive light on sportsmen,” Dietrick said. “It’s to show that we do more than just hunt. It’s to show that we care about the environment.”
He said they collected three pickup loads of trash from the roadway.
Dietrick said the other volunteers who helped were his wife, Donna; Delwyn Fry of Westover, Clearfield County; and Jim Charney and his son, Tyler, of Hastings.
HuntingPA.com is working to promote hunting, said
Dietrick, who along with McConnell and Paronish, is a volunteer regional representative for the site’s southwest region.
Folks visiting the site can exchange information, share game recipes and much more.
“It’s pretty popular,” Dietrick said, adding that there is no charge to visit the website.
A member of the Cresson and Patton sportsmen’s clubs, Dietrick is a Scoutmaster for a Boy Scout troop in Cresson that is sponsored by the Cresson club. He has been leading his troop in cleanup projects on Patton area roads since the mid-1980s.
Dietrick said his son, Dean Jr., helps with various HuntingPA.com service projects and that another son, Dustin, who was among the last U.S. troops to leave Iraq this month, communicates with him through the site.
McConnell, who founded CampingPA.com, said it was important to clean St. Lawrence Road because of a huge all-terrain vehicle gathering held along that road earlier this month at Rock Run ATV Park.
People came from as far as Florida for the gathering, he said.
“We just wanted the area to look nice for the sake of those guests as well as area residents,” McDonnell said.
He said both HuntingPA.com and CampingPA.com are working to promote the outdoors.
The cleanup of St. Lawrence Road shows that both websites care about the environment, he said.
He said the two websites have been cleaning that road for several years. State Rep. Gary Haluska, D-Patton, is a big help in organizing the project each year, he said.
McConnell, a Cresson Borough councilman, said his wife, Mary Jo, is instrumental with the efforts of CampingPA.
McConnell, who has an infant daughter, Kendall, also is a member of the Cresson Sportsmen’s Club, where he organized an Outdoor Exposition for Scouts last year.
Paronish said the projects that both websites sponsor are good ways for outdoorsmen and women to give back to the community.
The outdoors is a nice place, Paronish said about why both websites are promoting being out in nature.
“I like to hunt,” he said. “A day in the woods, looking at the beauty of nature, is more important than actually harvesting an animal,” he said.
He said his wife, Tasha, is supportive of his efforts with HuntingPA.com.
For their efforts, Dietrick and Paronish, both of Patton, and McConnell, a Cresson resident, are the Persons of the Week.
