OPINION —
I’VE ALWAYS BEEN fascinated by the big, moss-covered boulders that perplex the hillsides up at State Game Lands 86 in Warren County near F-Troop Camp.
Their size, their age, their monolithic beauty in the deep forest landscape, and their utility as deer-hunting stands all interest me. The fact that I accidentally tumble off them from time to time and risk my limbs and cranium is just the bad you take with the good.
Like the Middle Allegheny River Gorge, these boulders have not always been here. Both were formed toward the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago, when huge glaciers began to melt and move and agitate flatlands into deep gorges and steep hillsides and pick up chunks of sandstone from the earth’s bedrock and deposit them erratically on random slopes and valleys, where they rest today as huge monuments – the size of a truck or a house or an apartment building – to the planet’s ancient past.
I love to trek the woodlands and discover new boulders or “villages of boulders” as I often call the multiple formations.
You walk up to one and gaze at its size and rugged beauty, with the mottled gray and green moss on its flanks and often 30-foot oak trees growing from the top, and the whole thing just amazes me, even though I’ve been boulder-watching for 26 years.
We treat them as landmarks sometimes, “ . . .you climb straight up that hollow there, see, walk right up on Cathedral Rock, and then turn north along the ridgeline . . .”
And we name them according to shape and size or by the F-Troop Camp member who hunts there: Fortress Rock, Notch Boulder, Flat Top, Billy’s Rock, Todd’s Boulder, Gary’s Stand.
Each of us hunts a select boulder for X number of years, until it stops delivering good hunts, and then we search for a new hunting stand: a flat-topped boulder that’s accessible on the uphill side of a mountainside and commands a good view of whitetail escape routes below from a10- to 30-foot vantage. And we hunt there only on Opening Day of rifle season, when sufficient numbers of hunters are in the woods moving deer. On other days we still-hunt or drive.
My current boulder has served me for the past 10 years, and I’ve taken six bucks there, including two good 8-points and a fine wide-racked 7-pointer with a heavy build and blonde-colored antlers.
But two years ago, I spotted no legal bucks there, and last year I did not even see a deer, my worst first-day hunt ever, so I might have to start searching again.
I’ve also experienced three great boulder falls over the years, from three different rocks. Falls Number Three and Two nearly broke my head and butt, but Fall Number One was the most interesting.
It happened 16 years ago, when I borrowed Billy’s Rock on Opening Day while he explored elsewhere. As always at F-Troop Camp, we woke at 4 a.m. and started up the dirt road to the fire trail that runs above the trout stream by five.
I hiked in a mile and a half and climbed 800 feet to the crest of the bench that sometimes funnels escaping deer between the dangerous, hunter-frequented plateau above and the difficult steep hillside below.
By 6 a.m. I was resting on a boulder-top fallen log, sipping coffee from my Stanley thermos, enjoying the quiet time before daylight and the hunt.
I did not have my cell phone with me, but just then I received a call anyway, an urgent one, from Nature, and it was irresistible.
I selected a small boulder-top sapling-size tree to lean back against, way out on the edge of the rock, far from my hunting stand, a spot with lots of loose leaves available that I could use for cover-up later.
I pulled my pants down and leaned against the small tree trunk, and it snapped and hurled me backwards upside down along the side of the rock.
I reached out desperately with both hands and miraculously caught hold of some grapevines growing up the side of the boulder which . . . amazingly stopped my fall.
But there I was, hanging upside down, pants around my ankles, both hands vice-gripped onto the vines, out in the pure black darkness a half-hour before daylight, all alone.
So what do you do in a situation like that? I laughed. I conjured up an image of myself caught upside down in the vines with no pants on, and it was the funniest sight gag ever.
I laughed. I howled, I bellowed out hoots and shrieks of hilarity until I could laugh no more. Then I buckled down to the difficult task of climbing back up onto the boulder.
Good luck out there. And have a great week outdoors.
Don Feigert is the outdoors writer for THE HERALD and the ALLIED NEWS. His latest book, The F-Troop Camp Chronicles, and his earlier books are available by contacting Don at 724-931-1699 or dfeigert@verizon.net. Visit his Web site at www.donfeigert.com.
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Related Photos
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Herald outdoor writer Don Feigert looks over some big boulders as he looks for a hunting spot. Todd Puleo
THE EVENING CAMPFIRE: The naked truth about boulders
Don't get caught with your pants down
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