Post #1 of 5:
Hunting is Carbon’s second skin. Though we’re not unique in this regard, life
here is inextricably tied to it.
For hunting reaches beyond basic sustenance, it pulls
us onto the proving ground, and connects us to this land.
The comradery and the day in the woods is enough for
some. But for many, a day without
something to drag out and brag about is devastating.
John Deppe shot his first deer in December 1873. Young John was the son of Henry Deppe, a well-known
Pine Swamp saw-miller. His Hickory Run
area deer dressed out at 115 pounds. And
John was just one month shy of his seventh birthday.
 |
| Escaped from Mr. Ash's Game preserve on the Mahoning Mountain: Lewis Steigerwalt, reclined front left was the owner of the hotel, post office, and farm implement business at the crossroads of Andreas, Schuylkill County, just over the Carbon County line from East Penn. This 1923 picture of 16 buck hunters proudly displaying this fine 8 or 9-point buck is a testament to the scarcity of deer in our area at this time. The back of the photo says "first deer shot in Andreas," certainly deer were so scarce that shooting one was a cause to take multiple poses with it. More about this story and the men in the picture can be found in the end notes of this post. Were these men cursed? Many died through unfortunate circumstances, see End Notes for details.
Post #3: Laws, Tall Tales, & Accidents (Not yet Published)
Life on the Mountain: The Distilleries of the Pine Swamp Post #4: Hotel Jonas and other watering holes The Fire and the Fury - Albrightsville and the Great Fire of Hickory Run The Fire and the Fury 2 - Albrightsville - the Wilkinson-Henning Affair |
And this is Lehigh. Once again…
And still the timid deer come down
To drink, at eve and morning;
And still the laurel blooms as bright
As in my life's glad dawning....
~Augusta Moore, from Poems of Places Anthology 31, 1876-79
(The complete poem is reprinted in the End Notes section #3.)
(The complete poem is reprinted in the End Notes section #3.)
 |
| This is a young Snyder boy of Kresgeville with his first buck in the early 1950s. |
Today, Pennsylvanians expect to harvest a minimum 300,000+ deer per year. Many youth have good reason to have high hopes of filling their scopes with that magical chestnut-brown hair.
But John Deppe’s first deer in 1873 was rather significant. The harvests in those days were exceedingly slimmer than those in our modern age.
But John Deppe’s first deer in 1873 was rather significant. The harvests in those days were exceedingly slimmer than those in our modern age.
This is the first of three installments that will
examine the record of big game hunting in our area over the last 140 years.
 |
| The Rabenold-Finsel gang of Spring Hill Mountain 29 November 2004. Even a button-buck is cause for celebration, especially when it's the only deer shot that year in camp. A son's first deer is a special type of pride for fathers. That buck season was one of the many exceptionally warm ones in recent years. |
In the Beginning
You have to begin at the start of it all, when man
first evolved into tribes to see the evolution of this special rite of passage.
From Colonial times up into our nationhood, many area
farmers were known as “long hunters.”
The most famous one in this area was perhaps Philip Ginter who
discovered coal in Summit Hill in 1791 while out hunting deer.
Hunters like Ginter were farmers first. And once all of their crops were turned in
for the fall, they turned their attention to hunting.
Not just for a few days mind you. A “long” time entailed, two and three
weeks. They’d start in late November or
early December and would promise to be home for Christmas. Thus our modern day season was set.
 |
Long Days in Camp - Even into the "modern" era of hunting
did men hunt "long." This hunter, a patron of John Snyder's
"Jonas Hotel" speaks of his glum life back at work after
17 days hunting in Jonas, just over the Carbon County line. Many of the
patrons of these old hotels were doctors and professionals from the city.
Many more letters and pictures from these men will be posted
in the next installment of "Hunting in Carbon County." (A link
will appear here once it is finished and posted.)
|
Ginter, like many small farmers of the Mahoning
Valley, and valleys just like it, looked for the “buck season” to help expand
their land holdings.
Their goal wasn’t only to salt away venison for the
winter, but also to gather as many deer skins as possible. Each skin garnered a price of $1. Hence the term “buck skin” came to be applied
and the male deer forever known as a “buck.”
In those days 100-acres of farm land could be had for
$100. Some hunters were known to expand
their farms at 100-acre clips every few years mainly from money for buck skins.
One of the most famous of all area hunters, an almost
mythical man, was Jeremiah “Old Jerry” Greening of “Rattlesnake,” a hamlet of
Blooming Grove, Pike County.
His farm was just northeast over Monroe County from Carbon and he was known to have killed “upward of 500 deer” at a time when deer were much more scarce than they are today.
His farm was just northeast over Monroe County from Carbon and he was known to have killed “upward of 500 deer” at a time when deer were much more scarce than they are today.
Jerry farmed and had many sons who also hunted. Many of his exploits were told and retold all
over the country in syndicated newspaper stories in the 1870s and into the
1890s. More will be told of this man in
the “Tall Tales” section of Post #3 in this series.
 |
| With an old set of elk horns, this hunter keeping his venison high and dry. A Kresgeville area deer. |
 |
| Uncle Jerry Greening and his son Case from Pike County captrued three deer alive -a buck, a doe, and her fawn. The Blooming Grove Park Association was negotiating a purchase price for their breeding "inclosure." - Dec 1873 |
Game Preserves:
It could be said that modern deer conservation started
in Carbon with Josiah White. He was no
doubt the first to start a game preserve here in Carbon though he wasn’t the
last.
White took up residence here in the winter of 1817/18
to build the “Stone Turnpike,” the origin of the Switchback Railroad. He was the progenitor of the “the Old
Company,” the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company.
By 1828, he built the first of the grand homes in what
is today Jim Thorpe. He called it
“Parkhurst” where Kemmerer Park is today.
Even before he retrieved his family from his home
outside Philadelphia, White brought his eighty-year old mother here. And before he called for his children and
wife, he built Carbon’s first game preserve for deer, elk, and peacocks to
entertain his soon to arrive children.
He was not the last to do so. Asa Packer had one too. And so did T. A. Snyder, the builder of
Flagstaff Park, the inter-urban trolley line, and the incomparable Colonial
Court Mansion in Lehighton.
 |
| Descendants of Henry Melber still do two things as all the successive Mauch Chunk Melbers did: Work as undertakers and hunt, and not necessarily in that order. Those who know Tom and his son Nate Melber will attest there are no truer sportsmen than they are. For more on this story and how the Melbers were fully exonerated, see the End Notes of this post. |
One upstanding hunting family in Carbon was once
wrongly accused of hunting a deer from Snyder’s preserve.
 |
| The first evening of Doe Camp at Little Acres Farm, Kresgeville, 15 December 1959. |
 |
| The men and boys of Little Acres Farm - Doe Season December 1959 - Dreaming of sugar plums and venison. |
In July of 1914 Dr. Joseph Kalbfus and Dr. Penrose of
the State Game Commission visited Penn Forest township to select and declare a
site for a game preserve, to be stocked with deer from Michigan.
 |
| Dr. Kalbfus not only visited Penn Forest to set up a deer preserve area, but also implemented the re-stocking of deer from Trexler's Preserve to counties in need of deer: Lehigh, Potter, Elk, Berks, Wyoming, and others in Jan 1917. |
The men concluded that “few places in the state afford such an excellent place for raising deer than in Penn Forest Township.”
People went to great effort to stock deer in this area. In the fall of 1890, Henry O. Hughes of Carbon Hill, Alabama, helped to restock deer here by shipping two first-year fawns to his father-in-law William Evans in Slatington.
The article said the deer still had their spots, which
the newspaper account compared to the spots of a leopard. This evidence suggests that the average
citizen did not have first-hand knowledge of what a young deer looked like,
evidence of their rarity at that time.
In 1891, the “famous Alligator Club of Emmaus” sold their
three “handsome” deer to Jacob Reichard of Haymaker’s Island on the Lehigh,
near Allentown.
“Two of the deer were bred in captivity, and all of them are very fine, and as thoroughly domesticated as house cats. That they will prove a great attraction to visitors to the island cannot be doubted.”
“Two of the deer were bred in captivity, and all of them are very fine, and as thoroughly domesticated as house cats. That they will prove a great attraction to visitors to the island cannot be doubted.”
These two articles provide a curious glimpse of life
around white-tail deer here and provides ample evidence that deer were
considered a rare animal indeed.
Colonel Harry Trexler
 |
| This hearty buck was shot between Trachsville and Little Gap, where Russell Bollinger was known to hunt. Shown here is Russell's first wife Marian (George) who died of cancer in 1938 at the age of 28. |
No one embodies the era more than Colonel Harry
Trexler. A self-made millionaire of the
Lehigh Valley, Trexler made a fortune in the Portland cement business. But he was also a logger, purchasing
thousands of acres of timbering land.
The present day boundaries of Hickory Run State Park
were purchased by Trexler. He remodeled
the former Samuel Gould homestead and entertained guests with apple-jack punch
and fishing jaunts to nearby Sandy Spring.
The Gould property is adjacent to the Hickory Run
cemetery where members of the Gould family are buried along with other logging
and sawmill families of the area. Among
them, those who drown in the flash flood caused by the breach of a 70-acre sawmill
dam in October of 1849.
Trexler planned on donating the land for public
recreation. He said, “We live only a
short distance from the anthracite coal region where there is scarcely a blade
of grass growing…” The area lacked deer
habitat and Trexler was fixed on improving it.
He wanted men and their families to have a place for
outdoor recreation, “rather than have them loafing around pool rooms and
saloons fomenting anarchism, I would like to see Hickory Run developed into a
state park.”
Several state agencies (the Game Commission, Fish Commission
and the Department of Forest to name a few) commenced campaigns to receive the
park from Trexler’s will and trust.
Trexler passed away in a car accident in 1935, and
oddly, had taken the lands out of his will due to the bureaucratic wrangling. Eventually, trustees of his estate oversaw
the land transfer into the park and hunting lands we have today.
One recipient of Trexler’s will was Joseph
Heimbach. The Heimbach farm is the last
large farmstead, on both sides of Route 534, after Hawk Falls and before the
camping area.
Heimbach or his surviving wife, would receive an
annual salary from the estate to the amount of $500 per year. Heimbach may have been some sort of caretaker
or overseer of Trexler’s land or perhaps payment for the right of way through
his farm.
 |
| The smallest 6-pointer ever? Another deer shot by Russell Bollinger of Trachsville sometime in the 1930s. His father was Jonas Bollinger who was a nephew of John and Charles Snyder of Jonas Hotel. The hotel was started by Jonas Snyder around 1850. He had two boys (John and Charles) who ran the hotel from 1900 until 1950. Russell's grandmother Emaline Bollinger was one of four of Jonas Snyder's daughters. More on the Jonas Hotel will be written in Post #2 and Post #4. |
 |
| A 1954 photo of Col. Trexler's Game Preserve - Lehigh County |
The Bizarre and the Curious
Colonel Trexler also endowed a large game preserve just
south of Carbon in Lehigh County. In
March 1911, a trainload of wild game (forty does, ten bucks, and three
buffaloes) were unloaded at Colonel Trexler’s game preserve.
The three rail cars delivered the animals from a
preserve in New Hampshire as well as ones captured from the “Blue Mountain
Forest.”
 |
| January 1917 - How rare was wild game at this time? This Allentown Democrat article discusses released 8 deer, rabbits, and one wild turkey from the Philadelphia Zoo. One. |
The train arrived in Coplay at 8:00 PM March 2nd. Two and sometimes three crated deer fit into
one wagon. However, each buffalo,
weighing about 1,500 pounds, would each take up their own wagon en route to the
preserve.
A total of forty wagons were used to haul them the
three miles from the station, the “menagerie of wagons resembling a circus
procession never seen in this county.”
Lehighton also had a game preserve, created by William
Ash in 1910. Many are familiar with the
section of land west of Baer Memorial Park known as “Ashtown.” Ash’s home still stands there, a grand
example of the Sears & Roebuck catalog homes of that time.
Ash’s preserve was located on the Mahoning Mountain
near what is today known as “Graverville.”
 |
| Wild Turkey: A rare 1950s sight on the Barlieb Farm in Kunkletown. |
The first deer shot in the Andreas area in a
generation was actually a buck that escaped from Ash’s preserve. (Note the picture above.)
“Scarce and
Scattered” - 1880-1930
In this time period, lumber was king in Pennsylvania
and Trexler was only one of many Pennsylvanians who started their fortunes in lumber.
Williamsport was at one time the lumber capital of the
world. In 1899 Pennsylvania reached its
peak of annual lumber production with 2.3 billion board feet of lumber
harvested.
It made many in the state into “millionaires,” the
moniker for Williamsport High School today.
Today, Pennsylvania boasts of 59% or 16.7 million acres of forested
land.
By 1900 there were only nine to 9-13 million acres of
forest in the state. Compare this number
to the estimated 28 million acres back to William Penn’s time in the
1680s.
The squeeze on big game was on.
The Great Pine Swamp of northern Carbon County was
filled with lumber operations. The
plentiful old growth hemlock trees were cleared, feeding the stave mills for
barrel making and the slab bark sent to the many leather tanneries, Lehigh
Tannery being one of the largest in the world.
Indeed the area economy revolved around timber and
hunting. Carbon’s place at the hub of
the world-wide distribution of anthracite coal placed its own pressures on the
woodlands.
Canal boat captains would work the waterways all
summer long. And once December brought
the first freeze-over to the slack water, the men would commence hauling logs
out of the Pine Swamp to be used in boat repair and boat building at the
Weissport boat yard.
There is some conflicting evidence over just how rare
deer had become in the state. There is no
question that the number of deer and big game was extremely small compared to
today, through loss of habitat alone.
 |
| Six deer in Weissport - Most likely shot in Potter County, Reuben Small's favored spot in the 1930s. Reuben, from Massachusetts, met and married Lehighton's Esther Koch at business school, forming Lehighton's "Small and Koch Dairy" in the 1920s. (Click here from more on this dairy and other early Lehighton businesses. The Small and Koch segment is near the end of this hyperlink.) This Weissport scene is sometime in the early 1940s, as the McCall Bridge in the background was completed around 1938. |
Scarce they were indeed, making folks curious about
wild game in those days.
Hotels owners used wild game as prizes and to grab
attention at this time with “old-fashioned hustling matches” that attracted
crowds and brought in money.
Fred Horlacher (before he brewed his famous Allentown
beer) was a tavern owner in “Bowmansville” (Bowmanstown). On February 1879 he held a match and social
hop. There were a variety of prizes, but
the one sure to draw a crowd was the top prize: a “tame bear.”
Similarly, Moses Rabenold’s Hotel (near Emmaus) held a
“splendid year old buck deer, just now getting his first set of antlers” as a
prize at his hotel. Surely, wild animals
were of such scarcity and yet held in high esteem by the public to make such
offerings an attraction to the average citizen.
Perhaps the fact that a four-point buck found in
Albrightsville in 1892 best attests to just how rare deer were at this
time. An article in the local paper
stated how Mr. Dench discovered this buck skull and rack and how it was the
talk of the area.
Again, this was only a four-point deer. He didn’t shoot it. He found it.
Would this make news today?
Evidence that deer were curious to people and
therefore somewhat rare, can be found in Lehighton’s druggist T. D. Thomas.
 |
| Four Buck at Lehighton Park - Reuben Small of "Small and Koch Dairy stands at the right. Known to hunt in Potter County, more pictures from Small's Potter hunting camps will be posted in Post #2 of this Carbon Hunting Series. |
Thomas mounted a deer head in his shop’s First Street
window that he purchased from a Towamensing hunter named Edward Graver
(February 1893).
However some Carbon residents were successful hunters
despite historically low numbers of deer, as evidenced in two stories from Lehighton’s
Carbon Advocate in December 1877:
“Two Lehighton residents furnished the publisher of
the Carbon Advocate with fine venison roasts.”
Simon Walck and Alex Solt each furnished Editor Morthimer with deer meat.
The second story told of William Boyer of Big Creek “capturing”
“a very large deer one day last week.” It went on to say, “He started out again early
the next morning confident in capturing another, but always returning home with
an empty sack.”
(“Capture” was a word
used in those times for slaying a deer.
However, there were also men in those days who trapped deer to be sold
to various preserves and sportsmen’s groups who were eager to purchase
white-tails.)
So how thin was the herd? John M. Philips, a noted conservationist and
highly esteemed Pennsylvania hunter, shot a deer in December of 1883. About which he reportedly wrote to a friend:
“I have killed the last
deer in Pennsylvania.”
Philips would not have been the only person to make such claims. It appears many, seemed to relish the notoriety or distinction of being the last person to have shot a particular animal.
Other famous "last kills" in the state: Revolutionary war hero Col. John Kelly allegedly killed the last Pennsylvania buffalo in 1801. Jim Jacobson last elk, George Hastings last authentic panther, Dan Treaster last wolf, George Schmenk last brown bear.
Philips would not have been the only person to make such claims. It appears many, seemed to relish the notoriety or distinction of being the last person to have shot a particular animal.
 |
| This is the cabin of Dan Treaster in Centre County, PA. Treaster spoke of being held at bay for days in this cabin by packs of wolves. |
Other famous "last kills" in the state: Revolutionary war hero Col. John Kelly allegedly killed the last Pennsylvania buffalo in 1801. Jim Jacobson last elk, George Hastings last authentic panther, Dan Treaster last wolf, George Schmenk last brown bear.
 |
| The "famous" Emmaus Alligator Club expands their fold to five in May 1890- Allentown Democrat. |
A contradiction to the deer’s scarcity can be found in
this Carbon Advocate article from two years prior:
A man named Uncle Joe Jones, at 65-years of age, claimed
to have shot 33 deer and five bear in the 1881 season hunting in McKean and
Potter Counties. Game laws be damned!
His lifetime tallies: 3,527 deer, 321 bear, and 50
panthers. He allegedly didn’t keep
record for catamounts (lynx), wolves, or foxes.
These numbers are exceedingly high, even by “tall tale” standards.
Apparently hunting and fishing have always lent themselves
to such exaggeration. More on men like
“Uncle Joe Jones” and “Uncle Jerry Greening” will be examined in Post #3.
 |
| Every picture has a story. Every bloody 4-wheeler picture with a buck at night is an even better story. This story has been re-told several times since. Ryan's White Haven deer - 2011. |
High Demand and Limited Supply: Pressure to Boiling
Points
Pressure and boiling points were met between
“necessity” and the law. One old Pennsylvania
law forbade hunting on Sundays, “unless in cases of necessity.”
The mountain folk of northern Carbon County, the Great
Pine Swamp, relied plenty upon the herd to provide meals for their
families. The fact that the Game
Commission was working so diligently to guard the deer herd was on a collision
course with the needs of the many.
 |
| Article about crop damage in Monroe County - Allentown Democrat July 1904 |
The first game warden shot in Pennsylvania was in
1903. In 1904 three more wardens were
shot but 1905 had none.
Then 1907 made up for it, with seven officers shot in
performance of their duties (only three were fatal).
This entanglement between law and outlaws surfaced in
the Pine Swamp on Thanksgiving Day 1932.
The confrontation between Harry Wilksinson, a one-armed game warden and
his brother versus the family of Aquilla “Quilly” Henning in Albrightsville led
to murder.
The Hennings were bent on revenge after Wilkinson had
arrested one of them over a game regulation and lured the Wilkinson’s into the
woods by killing one of Wilkinson’s hunting dogs. For more on the Wilkinson-Henning affair, click here.
At the same time tensions were boiling over, the state
began its aggressive deer stocking program.
The first shipment of fifty deer arrived from Michigan in 1906. A total of 1,192 were stocked in the state
during the twenty years of the program.
But it was the lack of browse that was the main
problem.
This fact was ignored, and the commission went on a
new direction: holding doe as sacred. 1907
was the first year for a total ban on antlerless deer hunting.
Like so many of Pennsylvania’s hunting traditions,
this “buck only” sentiment still lingers heavily in the minds of many traditionalists
today.
The 1907 “buck only” season may have been a low point,
with only 200 buck taken state-wide.
(Along with 35 illegally shot does.)
 |
| April 1917 article describes the forest growth as "slim and un-nutritive" causing "boldness" in the deer now grazing on Stroudsburg-area wheat and grains. The article implies that this was a new phenomenon. |
And yet, in 1923, farmers were pleading for relief
from deer crop damage. The Game
Commission began providing deer-proof fencing and giving them authority to kill
deer for crop damage.
There are places where my family hunts in White Haven
where this wire fence, affixed directly to beech and cherry trees, is embedded
into trees today.
So the herd was scarce in some places and problematic
in others, and this renewed the debate over hunting does. A $10 per doe license was proposed in the
spring meeting of 1923 but was hotly protested.
Another solution at that time was to trap the doe in
the plentiful areas of the state and ship them to parts where they were
scarce. So a $25 per deer trapping
program was initiated by the Game Commission in Perry County in October 1923.
 |
| From Allentown Democrat - March 1923 |
Land owners would be paid the sum for each trapped and
crated deer, shipped by rail freight (pre-paid freight also paid by the state)
throughout the state. The law also
provided return pre-paid freight shipping of those crates back to their owners for
future use.
The 1923 season was a bust due to a lack of tracking
snow and that food was “scarce and scattered.”
In reporting on the season on January 16, 1925, the Harrisburg Telegraph
reported just two buck shot in the Harrisburg area.
But 1924 was a “banner year” with 7,778 shot (1,300
more than the previous year), a paltry sum compared to 1950s. However, in comparison to today’s 300,000+ seasonal
deer harvest, one can realize the impact this loss of habitat had on deer at
this time.
 |
| Deer weren't the only animal jauntily displayed as our heroes return home from the mountains. Shown here is Jonas Snyder's Hotel and Post Office around 1915. Jonas was the original post master and like most post offices at that time, the area was named for the post master, thus we have the hamlet of "Jonas" today. Eventually the hotel went to his son John and through various hands over the years, including to the family of Tom Held in the 1960s. Though open as a restaurant until recent times, it has since closed and now serves as a shelter for homeless veterans. More will be written about this and other Pocono Mountain hotels in Post #2. |
The State Game Commission won the right to have the
sole right to fix season bag limits and seasons for game in 1925, relieving the
state legislation from enacting laws in this regard. The additional power given to the Commission
allowed for decisions to be made based on science rather than on politics.
The forests were judged to have only a 250,000 deer
capacity. The woods had been kept at “brush stage” for longer than usual due to
fires, such as those set by huckleberry pickers.
Pennsylvania’s decimated forests were incapable of
supporting the current herd, estimated at the time at 800,000. Game Commission Director Joseph Kalbfus tried
to convince the public of this.
It was a hard sell.
The public’s mind could not understand this. For them, deer were still a rare sight. How could the state be “over populated” when
places like Andreas hadn’t shot a buck in over a generation?
 |
| Hunters' intuition at odds with Game Commission science - a never ending saga - March 1923. |
Director Kalbfus, instrumental in setting up
preserves, had been trying to crusade for antlerless hunting in the state since
1917. He saw how the land simply could
not sustain the current numbers and that regular yearly doe and buck
seasons were a necessity. Regional doe regulations had yielded little in thinning out the overpopulation.
But his proposed regulations were at odds with hunter
conventional wisdom. They saw the
killing of doe, at a time when they were carrying their young, was the root
cause. To their hunting intuition,
science had it all wrong.
The first state-wide antlerless season was proposed in
1928 and was greeted with strong protests, letters to editors, and petition
signing. The legislators promised to
stop it and de-authorize the Commission’s newly granted powers.
But Kalbfus said there would be “hell to pay” if it
wasn’t controlled by open hunting on both genders.
That winter, Clearfield County reported 1,000 dead
fawn. The deer were starving. The 1928 antlerless season netted 25,097
state-wide. Kalbfus was right, the
population needed an doe season and the herd started to become
manageable.
Deer food was still scarce. By 1931, the forest was nearing “pole
stage.” The mature trees were now too
large to provide food as well as providing too much shade. The shade of course inhibiting the growth of
the browse the herd depended on.
The 1950s saw a convergence of a healthy balance of
habitat and game population along with permanent changes to antlerless hunting
regulations. Finally, by the late 1950s,
the annual doe season took hold.
 |
| Keen Ahner was ever proud of his Jeeps, perhaps their most loyal customer anywhere. Here he is with the family on the old concrete roadway through Big Creek in 1971 as work on the Beltzville Dam was finalized. |
Yet many hunters who bridged those years continued to
believe in the “sacred doe” philosophy.
A concept that still holds sway today.
 |
| Keen Ahner and young Larry Solt on the front porch of the old Ahner homestead in Franklin Township with carp they caught in the Delaware around 1950. |
Brothers Keen and Grover Ahner of Franklin Township,
both gone and sorely missed, were men who started their hunting life in the
early 1940s. Both men still preached the
importance of only shooting buck.
Though both men certainly shot their share of doe to
fill their own freezers, I can still hear the “buck only” logic that pervaded
the thoughts of most hunters from that era.
They’d say “if you shoot one, you shoot three.”
For those growing up in the 1930s and 1940s, deer were
still a rare sight.
Chester Mertz, recently deceased of the Mahoning
Valley was the last person alive who had a living memory of the high, wooden
planked fence in the woods near Henry Graver’s property. (Click here for more on that.)
“We’d climb around Henry Graver’s property and William
Ash’s deer preserve, an all wooden fence…it seemed too high, much higher than
any cow pen or horse corral we’d ever seen, and we’d sit and wonder what those
deer were like.”
“I remember the day I saw my first deer. It was a big deal…I was about seven or eight
(1927)…and my father Amby and me were driving over the Mahoning Mountain…a
farmer was standing in the road and made us stop…he said, “Hirsch, hirsch”
pointing to one standing along the edge of the wood line.
 |
| Son Jon's 2016 West Virginia buck. |
The Resurgence:
The state-wide deer herd was certainly getting back on
track by the 1931 season. It was the
first season open for both buck and doe (spike buck were still the chosen
protected segment of the population) with 24,796 buck taken, along with 70,255 doe for a total
of 95,051.
By 1938, they closed buck
hunting in the state and 171,662 antlerless deer were harvested.
Thanks to the timbering industry, our state forests were no longer a pole-stage forest, with so much cleared land and with the lack of
“over-shadowing trees,” the timbering produced a young and brushy
forest of young oak, cherry, maple, birch, and beechnut, perfect habitat for the deer herd.
All these new seedling growing at once, not to mention
all the browse from huckleberry, elderberry, and dogberry shrubs and it is
little wonder why the 1920s was the beginning of a population boom that has
sustained hunters up until recently.
Understanding this new science, the Game Commission decided to devote $1 from each doe license
to the “cutting and otherwise removing over-shadowing tree growth,” this promotion of "underbrush sprouts and saplings for deer food," became the essential food source, the payoff and reward to the Pennsylvania hunter of today.
~Much of the data cited here comes from PA Game
Commission Website and articles written by PGC Wildlife Biologist J. T. Fleegle
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. Andreas First Buck Shot Picture - 1923
 |
| The above picture of Andreas from the 1940s is courtesy of the Bill Schwab collection. The deer and men picture with the scale in it would have been just out of frame left of this picture. The hotel on the right is the backdrop of the other two pictures, note the columns. The Steigerwalt farm implements yard would be out of frame right, to the rear of the hotel. The Steigerwalt homestead is catty-corner from the present day and as seen here Andreas Post Office. Descendants of Steigerwalt still own the home today. Andreas started out as "Sittlers" when Civil War Sargent Tilghman Sittler was named postmaster in June 1883. But the Republican was ousted by his Democratic rival Wellington Weaver in 1885. Both men also competed against each other for customers, as they each owned a grocery store across the street from each other. Weaver renamed the post office "Andreas" after his wife Fianna's maiden name. But Sittler was won back in 1890 until 1892. Then switched back to Andreas from 1893 to 1897. It remained Sittlers until 1916 and then changed permanently back to Andreas there after. |
 |
| The Andreas Hotel, the backdrop of two of the pictures. Steigerwalt implements is in the background and the Steigerwalt home is out of frame right. The photographer of this picture would be standing near the L. W. Steigerwalt scale that is in the one picture. Those scales were quite near the roadway (Route 895) and were said to have been there up until the last 30 years. |
 |
| This is a picture of the Andreas Hotel on the north west side of the intersection at Andreas. Steigerwalt's implement yard was to the rear of this building. The picture here above and one directly below were made into 8x10 pictures and it has been said that many if not all of the men pictured here received a copy of each from Bretney Studios in Lehighton. Surely these triumphant victory shots were taken to celebrate the first deer shot in Andreas in a lifetime. However, it was widely believed at the time the this buck was an escapee from Ash's Game Preserve from the other side of Mahoning Mountain. |
 |
| Lewis Steigerwalt Jr. sold farm implements in Andreas and ran the hotel and post office there as well. |
 |
| The List - This list was scribbled down sometime ago by the Steigerwalt family in Andreas. This list is a big help in identifying the men pictured below. The several men in the picture have been positively identified by living descendants today. |
 |
| The above list was written on the back of this 1923 picture is believed to be as correct as possible at this time. See Eckhart's History of Carbon County, v5, pg 162. ON THE GROUND: Lewis Steigerwalt Jr lies at deer's head. Over his right shoulder, Oliver Wertman (kneeling), LeRoy Everett (behind Lewis' head), and Charles Nothstein (behind the antlers). Middle is James DeLong (head at the beginning of "Andreas), Russ Sinyard (to DeLong's left). Lying down at tail is Oliver Wertman and kneeling behind him is Stanley Arner. STANDING: L-R: Osville Ruch, Moses Steigerwalt, and Charles Gerber. Tailor Frank Rebrecht (all tailors wore ties when hunting), Lewis Steigerwalt Sr., Cal Ginder (tallest), and Pierce Kerscher. (One source said that Oliver Wertman was Henry DeLong. Perhaps DeLong is another person in this photo.) |
Were these men cursed for shooting this deer?
(Ages given are age at time of the picture unless otherwise noted:)
Sadly, a few of the men pictured here had only lived a short time. Lewis Steigerwalt Sr. died just three years after this eventful day at the age of 73. His son, Lewis Jr., died of a stroke fifteen years later at the age of 56.
Osville Ruch was a widower who worked in the coal yards, Moses Steigerwalt was a clerk for Lewis, he died in 1936 at the age of 70. Charles Gerber was a 28-year-old farm hand and implement salesman for Lewis.
Calvin Ginder was killed on his way to work at the Palmerton Zinc in December 1963 when his sedan station wagon collided with a tractor-trailer in 1963. He was 29 when the picture was taken. The tailor of Andreas, Frank Rubrecht was 56 in the picture, he died in 1934.
Stanley Arner was 29 in the picture and was a farmer from East Penn. He died in 1961 at the age of 68. Charles Nothstein was 32 and Lewis Jr's borther-in-law. Also an East Penn farmer, he died one year after the picture was taken after developing a tetanus infection from a foot injury on the farm.
Russ Sinyard was 23 in the picture. He hauled timber in the 1930s and delivered stone and coal in the 1940s. In 1944 he slipped from his truck and fractured his skull on the concrete roadway, he was just 43. Pierce Kerscher killed himself with a 12-gauge shotgun, likely the one pictured here, in 1942 at the age of 48.
 |
| This is a picture of the Lewis Steigerwalt farm implement yard behind the north west corner at Andreas, to the rear of where the deer pictures were taken above. |
 |
| The "Outlaw Melbers" - (L to R) - Shown here are Henry Melber (born 1857) was the original undertaker of the Melber clan. Seated next to him is son Edward (born 1888), with Harry (knealing, born 1879) along with his son Nathan (born 1907). There is no finer tradition to pass down along family lines than hunting. Tom and his wife Mary, along with their son Nate continue their family's legacy. Note all the pups eating from the dish. The article describing their questioned day of hunting that December 1907 referred to the Melbers using dogs. Of course the Melbers were found innocent of all charges (see article below) and the Game Warden from Slatington had to bare the burden of all court costs. For more on hunting in the Pine Swamps click here. |
3. Last Kills
 |
| Aaron Hall (1828-1892 - Killer of the last authentic Pennsylvania panther |
 |
| Daniel Ott ( 1820-1916) - Killer of the last Pennsylvania Elk. |
4. Augusta Moore's complete "Lehigh" Poem from 1876-79
 |
| The following series of Buck were shot this week before Thanksgiving in West Virginia by Nate Rabenold, and Nate and Tom Melber (They each bagged one, a 4, 6, and 8-point bucks). |
No comments:
Post a Comment