Nov 2, 2003 By Rod Schoener 8 min read

Hunters! Give Ohiopyle State Park a try. Yes, I said Ohiopyle State Park.

Southern Fayette County Wildlife Conservation Officer Steve Leiendecker is releasing a good many pheasants in the park this year.

Many hunters are already showing up, and Leiendecker wants everyone to know where the birds are going since they are the ones who pay for them.

“People from the park contacted me and said they have some good pheasant habitat within the park,” Leiendecker said. “I went up and checked it out. The habitat was good as was access to the area. There are some really nice overgrown fields. We stocked birds and almost immediately hunters started showing up.

“We’re also stocking the overgrown fields near the radio tower on Kentuck Knob.”

Leiendecker said that other new areas being stocked this year are on Sugar Loaf at the top of the mountain near Confluence Lookout just before Lookout Road. The birds are being released in the fields on the left side of the highway just before Lookout Road.

Two of the more heavily stocked areas in the lowlands are on Farm Game Project 20 along York Run Road and behind the Vo-Tech School on Route 857.

“We’ve been expanding our stocking out there,” Leiendecker said. We’ve been trying to get an additional 300-acre field to stock. If people with good habitat that is not posted would contact me, I would stock the land. I’m looking for new places to put birds.”

Before long, people are going to start calling Leiendecker “Griz” as in Grizzly Adams.

From mid-June to mid-October, Leiendecker has trapped and transferred seven bears with six coming from one cornfield in the Chalk Hill area alone. The other one was caught near Laurel Caverns.

All the bears were relocated to the Quebec Wilderness Area, Game Lands 51 or Game Lands 111 on the Fayette-Somerset County line.

So far none of the bears have returned, and none of them were ever trapped before, as they were not ear-tagged.

The bears weren’t really destructive. The only thing they did was eat some corn.

“But that’s a big thing if you’re a farmer,” Leiendecker said. “The farmers were hit hard this year by the bears. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that this was a bad acorn production year.

“Farmers are upset, and I would be too. I try to get a trap to their farms and catch the bears as soon as I can. The problem is that in most cases the farmers don’t realize that there is bear damage until they get ready to cut the corn. Unfortunately, by then the bear has already been there and is long gone.”

The biggest bear Leiendecker trapped was a 300-pounder caught near Laurel Caverns, but he picked up a sow that was killed on Route 40 near the PennDot building that weighed between 350 and 375 pounds.

“It was one of the biggest sows I’ve ever seen,” Leiendecker said.

“There were also two other road kills in the county that I know of and two others that were stolen before we could get there to pick them up.

“Usually with a record harvest like we had last year you don’t hear much from bears the following year, yet this year we had a record number caught following nuisance complaints in the county. I caught seven this year. That is the most ever taken out of this district in a year that I am aware of.”

Besides stocking pheasants and answering bear complaints, Leiendecker and his staff of deputies are also very busy with law enforcement.

“We are currently in the process of prosecuting a bowhunter who killed a protected buck and didn’t report it,” Leiendecker said.

Leiendecker said they had a “good poaching case” one night last week in German Township when a resident called the district office to report he heard some shooting.

“We went out there thinking we wouldn’t get too far without much solid information to go on,” Leiendecker said.

“We went to the property where the shooting was reported and set up a little surveillance. Before long, four guys came into the field and recovered a nice 8-point buck. When we got to them they were in the process of cutting the head off the deer.

“They said they were out fox hunting and stumbled onto the deer in the dark. They said they were cutting the head off because they thought it ‘would be a waste’ to just leave it.

“We charged all four with various charges. They were in possession of .22-250 with a bull barrel and a 12 gauge shotgun.

“They were really surprised when we appeared out of the darkness. There goes the theory that WCOs don’t get out of their vehicles.

“Those who shoot bucks illegally are stealing them from honest hunters. Sportsmen have to put a lot of hours in the woods before they get a nice buck.

“They were equipped for night hunting, as they had a 2 million candlepower spotlight hooked up to a portable power unit. Unfortunately, it didn’t give them much of an edge.

“It all gets back to local residents reporting shooting and suspicious activity.

“In this case, the deer had a high eight-point rack that was also very symmetrical. It is just one of many nice bucks that won’t be available to sportsmen because of illegal activity.”

In other law enforcement news, two archery hunters were prosecuted for hunting over bait, and three other men were arrested for spotlighting well after midnight with a rifle in their vehicle.

Another arrest was made on a case involving a hunter who was found guilty of various charges last hunting season.

The hunter agreed to make payments on his fine, but did not keep up with the payments.

A local magistrate issued a warrant for the arrest of the individual who lived in Maryland but worked locally in Pennsylvania.

Leiendecker went to the individual’s place of employment and placed him under arrest.

The magistrate then asked the individual to pay the fine, which he said he couldn’t pay. Since the man was unable to come up with additional money, the magistrate ordered the WCOs to take him to the county jail.

Leiendecker said that as far as he knew the guy is still in the county lockup.

In a very unfortunate incident, a juvenile archery hunter in Adah walked into the yard of one resident and shot a puppy. Leiendecker said that the youngster faces a long list of charges.

Leiendecker wasn’t supposed to get a new patrol vehicle in the near future, but things changed when a motorist lost control of his vehicle and slammed into Leiendecker’s state vehicle while it was parked in front of is residence, totaling the state car.

On the lighter side, Leiendecker noted that a farmer in the Markleysburg area saw a coyote on his property. He went to the house to get a firearm, but when he returned the coyote had gone up the hill. The farmer shot the coyote, and as he and his son approached, he noticed the coyote had a live groundhog clamped firmly in its jaws.

The farmer handed the firearm to his son and kicked at the coyote’s head to free the groundhog.

Unfortunately, it got free but the youngster immediately shot the woodchuck much to his father’s dismay.

In another incident, a rabbit hunter had a hot chase going. As his three beagles circled closer, he was surprised to see a seven-pound lop-eared rabbit come out of the brush.

Deer hunters will be glad to hear that Leiendecker is seeing some nice bucks while on patrol.

“One night a while back I saw two beautiful bucks near Deer Lake that must have just lost their velvet as the antlers were still bloody,” Leiendecker said. “I’ve been hearing about big bucks in the 14- and 16-point range from different places, and a lot of guys I’ve spoken with say they are seeing more bigger bucks this year.

“Hunting pressure has been very minimal, and I don’t know what to attribute that to. On the first day of small game season, one deputy said he wasn’t sure people knew it was hunting season. No one was hunting in the lowlands. I put out 300 birds in one area and couldn’t find a hunter. The one hot spot seemed to be in Game Lands 238, where one deputy checked a total of 19 birds harvested by about a dozen different hunters.”

Turkey hunters may encounter fewer birds than in years past. Leiendecker says that he sees turkeys but fewer than last year and attributes that to another wet spring and a rough winter.

Rabbits don’t seem to be in good supply. Leiendecker said, “I talked to a rabbit hunter who was hunting with four beagles. He said it was the worst first day he ever had.”

Inseason pheasant stockings continue as Leiendecker released 13 crates of roosters and three crates of hens last week.

Leiendecker is amazed that people are still calling for hunter education classes. “In June and July, we couldn’t fill the classes. Now what hunting season is here and deer season is only weeks away, people are looking for classes.”

Five deputies and two applicants on ride-along status are currently assisting Leiendecker in his duties.

He is always looking for more deputies and urges interested people to get in touch with him.

Good hunting!

Rod Schoener is the Herald-Standard outdoors writer.