There is life after deer season

The climax of the outdoor year for many ended yesterday — the “regular” firearms deer season. Now we can get on with Christmas shopping, selecting a tree, and wrapping presents in festive paper. Unless, of course, you’re fortunate enough to have a deer hung up to skin, butcher, and wrap into neat white packages of freezer paper. First things first.
Necessities that follow a successful hunt have occasionally been a source of friction here on the home front, especially when the impulse strikes to go beyond mere butchering to experiment with making kielbasa, bologna, and jerky — all time-intensive tasks at a time of year when time crunches against Christmas.
At least the time crunch is less intense than years ago when the three-day “doe season” followed the two-week buck hunt. That framework always put the last days of deer hunting in even more direct conflict with holiday prep. Now that the Game Commission combined buck and antlerless hunting in the season’s second week, we hunters have three bonus days to get into Christmas spirit. I can use it since I tend to “drop out” during deer season. Just ask anyone who has tried to call or text me the past two weeks.
But I’m not really a grinch. Our granddaughter visits often, and like any young child is enthralled with Christmas. I (at Nana’s pro-active prompting) used that stretch of nice weather in mid-November to festoon her swing-set and nearby sheds and conifers with lights. Her awed face bathed in festive glow and snow-glare is reward for the tangled wires and dormant bulbs that must be searched out and replaced.
Ardent outdoor folks can use the break from the woods and waters during the yuletide celebrations, because there is a lot to do outdoors after the holiday.
For one, deer hunting comes back into season the day after Christmas, but with a technical handicap. Only 18th century-style flintlock muzzleloaders and archery equipment are legal for taking deer Dec. 26-Jan. 18. A hunter with a flintlock rifle must overcome not only the challenge of finding a deer offering a shot, but also cross their fingers in hopes the gun goes off at the crucial moment. There are a lot of little precautions you can take to improve the odds, but if a drop of rain or clump of snow falls on the prime-powder, you’re carrying what amounts to a 12-pound counterweight around in the woods. It’s still an enjoyable challenge, though, and it boosts your admiration for the frontier hunters who lived off what they killed in these western Pennsylvania hills with the same technology.
If ice-anglers get the ultimate Christmas present, it will be delivered as an extended polar vortex beginning around New Year’s Day. Last year, except for the perennially colder waters of High Point Lake at Mt. Davis, most local lakes and ponds never offered a day of safe ice all winter. Even with climate change, though, things still average out in the short-term, and the odds set last year suggest we’ll get to fish through six or eight inches of strong, clear ice. Let’s hope.
One of the best things about ice-fishing is that you can make it as serious or as laid-back as you want. Lots of ice-anglers enjoy the social aspects as much as the fishing itself. There is a primitive pleasure in clustering around (not too close this year) holes in the ice with friends and family, sharing hot food, cold refreshments, laughs, and nervous shrugs when the ice groans.
With cooperative weather, there’s a lot to do outdoors after Christmas beyond the “hook-and-bullet” genre. It’s a surprise that cross-country skiing is not more popular around here. Perhaps it will be this winter, given that sporting goods retailers ran out of fishing tackle, bicycles, and kayaks last summer prompted by Covid-demand for something to do. Our area has a wide range of cross-country destinations that adapt to all skill levels and trip expectations. Try the trails at Fort Necessity National Battlefield, or the Great Allegheny Passage at Ohiopyle or Confluence for gentle grades. More adventurous skiers can probe dozens of trails at Ohiopyle State Park, Forbes State Forest, or at Bear Run Nature Reserve at Mill Run.
On any day of halfway moderate weather in the mountains you’ll see cars topped with kayaks and whitewater canoes headed for the Yough at Ohiopyle. I enjoy moderate whitewater in my solo canoe but paddling the rapids in winter is beyond my definition of extreme adventure. You have to admire the intrepid hard-core spirit, though. If I were only younger. Well, I was younger once and I didn’t do it that time either.
But for the adventurous of any age, here in the Laurel Highlands there’s always something worthwhile and meaningful to do outdoors.