2009-11-03 06:00:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
It's perhaps the most glorious day of fall. And I'm smack dab in it. Fourteen feet up in a treestand on a ridge in the Appalachian Mountains. Leaves in crayon yellows, russets and muted oranges swirl by on their downward spiral, forming a new soft carpet on the forest floor. T......
2009-10-27 06:09:00
AD CRABLE
Picture a paved trail friendly to walkers, bikes and whatnot, tracing the Susquehanna from Columbia to nearly the Dauphin County line.It would flow through placid river bottom woods, restored wetlands and farm fields.It would pass picnic areas, historic iron furnace sites, an arched......
2009-10-20 09:29:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
"It just seemed to be in my blood. Mother Nature and I have had a love affair ever since I can remember. I'd rather be in the woods with Mother Nature than a lot of people."That's 71-year-old Ron Witwer talking. It's hard to get an interview with the retired Case New ......
2009-10-13 07:40:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
After a couple hundred years of abusing the wetlands in its midst, this city has made amends with a a major shout-out to embrace its marsh. The 212-acre Russell W. Peterson Urban Wildlife Refuge and the $11 million DuPont Environmental Education Center that peers into the reclaimed swamp ope......
2009-10-06 12:50:00
AD CRABLE, Staff
Darin Mack's goal was to get his son to Alaska to see a vast untamed wilderness before he entered the Marines after high school next summer. "Even though the times are a little tough, we just decided it was now or possibly never," says Mack, 36, of Avondale, Chester County. ......
2009-09-15 07:56:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
If you haven't been to New York City in a while, may I urge a visit to the Big Apple for a walk in the park. No, not Central Park. I'm talking about the new "park in the sky," the High Line. It's an instantly hip linear walkway built on an abandoned elevated frei......
2009-09-08 09:14:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
The diminutive bog turtle, a creature discovered for the world in Lancaster County in the 18th century, is facing yet another threat to its long precarious existence.Already on the federal threatened list and endangered in Pennsylvania, the secretive bog turtles are now turning up dead, po......
2009-09-01 08:18:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
For years, local nonprofit nature groups have been permitted to meet for free, without supervision, in the North Museum of Natural History and Science. The museum's genesis comes from amateur naturalists and some of the groups provided the museum with their well-regarded collections. B......
2009-08-25 08:00:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
There are 35 Rock Runs in Pennsylvania, and none of them is as ruggedly, unremittingly drop-dead beautiful as the one I just plunged into, screaming all the way on the 20-foot fall. Several publications have anointed it the prettiest stream in Pennsylvania. Backpacker magazine has gone a......
2009-08-18 10:10:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
Don't blame it on global warming, but remember the 10-foot-long manatee from Miami that showed up in Havre de Grace, Md., at the mouth of the Susquehanna River in June? That's only 43 miles from downtown Lancaster. Not quite as dramatic, but highly unusual and in keeping with er......
2009-08-04 09:33:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
Some of the color is gone from this summer. I'm talking about a dramatic and worrisome decline in butterflies, skippers and moths this summer. "Have I noticed it? I don't see anything! It's unbelievable," exclaims well-known Lititz naturalist Al Spoo. ...
2009-07-28 09:44:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
I freely admit it. I got lost exploring the Lancaster County Conservancy's new Texter Mountain Nature Preserve. It was my first time at this newly protected northern Lancaster County gem and I was following Harnish Run, a lush high-quality stream with native brook trout. After I had my......
2009-07-21 06:01:00
AD CRABLE
Pity the poor eastern hellbender. Cool name, bad rap.This secretive, long-living salamander that can grow to more than to 2 feet long and reach 4-5 pounds, is one of the least-known creatures of its size in Pennsylvania.And horribly misunderstood.Heck, even look at its name. ......
2009-07-15 10:23:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoors trails
It was a backpacking trip down Memory Lane. Sixteen years ago, I had made this same taxing rock scramble to the top of Tibbet Knob with my first daughter for one of her first backpacking experiences. Now, I had returned with 8-year-old daughter Hannah, to hook her, I hoped, on one of my......
2009-07-14 10:05:00
AD CRABLE
It was a backpacking trip down Memory Lane. Sixteen years ago, I had made this same taxing rock scramble to the top of Tibbet Knob with my first daughter for one of her first backpacking experiences. Now, I had returned with 8-year-old daughter Hannah, to hook her, I hoped, on one of my ev......
2009-07-07 14:10:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
It's an evocative painting. A man poles his way across the Susquehanna in the shadow of the Pinnacle, near Pequea, in 1897, eight years before a series of hydroelectric dams began altering the free-flowing nature of the river. The man is floating by the piers left from the Street Road cov......
2009-06-30 07:52:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
Pennsylvania could be largely devoid of bats within two to three years. That's the startling and sad outlook foreseen by Greg Turner as the sudden and mysterious white-nose syndrome fungus sweeps through the state. "I don't think anyone thinks we can stop it. We'll easil......
2009-06-23 06:58:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
On the surface, there's something decidedly lifeless about the Eastern Penn Mushroomers. I mean the object of their fascination mostly live on dead, rotting things, for heaven's sake. On a recent club foray in the woods of Gifford Pinchot State Park in York County, Cathy Cholmel......
2009-06-16 09:42:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
Unquestionably, the half-mile that Pequea Creek alternately rushes, then languidly meanders, through a glen of cliffs, boulders and tall, shading trees is one of Lancaster County's natural gems. Where else in Lancaster County is there such a compression of wild water in such an un-Lancaster......
2009-06-09 07:57:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
You're riding along on your bike. The multiple lanes of straight paved highway are there. But so are the trees crowding in, chunks of pavement lying about. The two tunnels are dark and drips of water splatter on your head. And the quiet. "It's very familiar to you. You can s......
2009-06-02 08:45:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
It could have continued as an old sealed-off dump, closed to public access. Instead, thousands in Lancaster city and its suburbs soon will be only minutes away from a multi-use network of trail loops that pass through woods, a wildflower meadow, a picnic area long Little Conestoga Creek, an ar......
2009-05-26 07:20:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
It's a delicious irony. Here I am walking among big trees, thrilled by the sight of a scarlet tanager and wishing I could identify the warblers and other bird calls washing over me like a summer rain. I'm only 8 miles from the state capitol, but the trees all around me will be allo......
2009-05-19 09:23:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
Depression-era Republicans campaigned for a chicken in every pot. Penn State Master Gardeners and ice cream giant Haagen-Dazs would settle for a blooming plant in every flower box. Alarmed at the continued decline of the honeybee, Penn State's Master Gardeners have launched a statewide camp......
2009-05-12 07:39:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
There's a good chance you don't realize that here in Lancaster County we are surrounded by bad and wasteful outdoor lighting. Unless you've been to a gas station so flooded with light that you forgot to turn on your lights when you drove away. Unless your children have grown up......
2009-05-05 14:37:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
Here's a chance to do the scientific work scientists in Pennsylvania can't do. And, you can probably do it on your normal walks, maybe even in your backyard. It's so easy even a child can do it, and hopefully will. The Commonwealth's salamanders, frogs, turtles, snakes and ......
2009-04-28 09:23:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
Local naturalist Mary Ann Schlegel can't coax her 12-year-old daughter, Hyla, into taking a hike with her. But when mom suggests they do an orienteering course, the girl scrambles for her sneakers. "I just think it's a marvelous way to get kids out in the woods and moving arou......
2009-04-20 07:08:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
If you pay any attention at all to birds — even if you just hang out a birdseed feeder in the backyard — it's been a remarkable past several months in Lancaster County. New bald eagle nests all over the place. Two new peregrine falcon nests. An inundation of boreal visitors s......
2009-04-14 07:02:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
Professional anglers have their Bassmasters Classic. There are walk-a-thons and enviro-thons. Now, local birdwatchers, from rank amateurs to veritable ornithologists, have a Birding Classic. Combining elements of all of these, the Lancaster County Conservancy and the Lancaster County Bird Club ......
2009-04-07 08:50:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
If you enter John E. Byler's home in Manheim Township and take a left from the kitchen, you won't step into the family room. Rather, you enter first one, then another of Byler's vaulted-ceiling trophy rooms, containing mounts and memories of the hunter's big-game trips dating ba......
2009-03-31 13:36:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
With some spring rains finally arriving over the weekend, all systems are go for the opening of another "early" trout season on Saturday in Lancaster and 17 other southeastern counties. The rest of the state has to wait until Saturday, April 18. This is the third year for an earl......
2009-03-24 07:53:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
Anglers, birdwatchers, families looking for convenient outings and anyone who loves the character of the Susquehanna River can all rejoice at new opportunities opening up around the Conowingo Dam. The hydroelectric dam 4 miles south of the Lancaster County-Maryland line has long been a destinat......
2009-03-17 07:30:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
Late-winter cold and rainy nights. It's a great time to be alive if you're Jesse Rothacker. Rothacker, a herpetologist from Manheim and others who fear not nasty weather to view one of nature's great but little-witnessed orgies, creep across the Lancaster and Lebanon landscape in ra......
2009-03-10 09:07:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
Tornadoes and snow and fishtailing airplanes, oh my. That's what my recent dalliance in the supposedly sleepy Deep South brought me. It begins placidly enough with two days in Savannah. Ever since reading "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," I'd wanted to explore her gho......
2009-03-03 07:08:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
In an upstairs room at the North Museum, Mark Larocque is throwing around more Latin names than spells in a Harry Potter movie. Larocque, who recently moved his environmental consulting business from Chester County to outside Quarryville, is regaling the Muhlenberg Botanical Society with colorf......
2009-02-24 09:18:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
Are you seeing many more robins, Carolina wrens, bluebirds and vultures than you used to here in Pennsylvania? That's a good thing if you like to watch birds. But turns out it's likely a bad thing for the birds. A new study that examines 40 years worth of Christmas bird counts from......
2009-02-17 09:51:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
Given: The Pennsylvania Game Commission is being crippled by a revenue shortage. Given: The agency could make a lot of money by allowing drilling for Marcellus shale natural gas, extraction of coal and ridgeline wind turbines on much of its 1.4 million acres spread across 287 game lands....
2009-02-10 09:20:00
AD CRABLE
What is it about these black powder shooters? They have a reputation of being fanatic about their hobby, which is shooting the firearms that enabled the white man to settle this country. Take Sue Curtis. Following an all-terrain-vehicle accident in December, the 61-year-old Clarkville, Md.......
2009-02-03 12:21:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
"It was very warm — barely 10 below zero — and the men did not mind."
— Jack London from a short story, "An Odyssey of the North"
Our group of five seem a long way from "The Call of the Wild" as we start our a......
2009-02-03 12:20:00
STAFF
...
2009-01-27 08:21:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
Winter, with the curtains of leaves and distorting humidity gone and views opened up, is an excellent time — if you are not adverse to such things — to seeing city skylines. It's not gazing into a patchwork of farmland or doting on undulating mountain ranges, but there's not......
2009-01-06 06:57:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
The Carolina parakeet, which your grandfather may have seen in Lancaster County. Gone forever. The passenger pigeon, once one of the most common birds in America and which nested in the treetops of Pennsylvania forests. Extinct. Martha, the last one, died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1......
2008-12-23 10:51:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
"I went hunting for the first time and I'm only 6 years old," Cody Bonholtzer of West Lampeter Township wrote next to an on-line scrapbook photo of himself, beaming ear to ear and holding two grey squirrels he shot on a glorious fall day. "I had so much fun getting to hunt with my dad and pappy......
2008-11-18 07:57:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
The sidewinder rattlesnake and red racer had shared the same glassed home for at least seven years. One morning, the rattler wasn't there. Since it's not desirable to have missing poisonous snakes at a public zoo, there was a rather high-priority search launched. Where did the ratt......
2008-11-17 20:55:00
AD CRABLE
The sidewinder rattlesnake and red racer had shared the same glassed home for at least seven years. One morning, the rattler wasn't there.Since it's not desirable to have missing poisonous snakes at a public zoo, there was a rather high-priority search launched.Where did the......
2008-11-11 07:43:00
AD CRABLE
One of the more unique hikes you'll ever find in these parts takes place on Sunday, Nov. 23, on game lands surrounding Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area. Feel free to join David Stoddard and the Lancaster Hiking Club to walk in a ditch. Not just any ditch, mind you, but one laborious......
2008-10-28 07:59:00
AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
Here I was, surrounded by the Dolomite Mountains, but no place to go. Sure, our family was taking day trips into this school of hard rock to visit breathtakingly beautiful hamlets steeped in medieval history and architecture. I was being adventurous at the dinner table, ordering stuffed guin......
2008-09-30 07:17:00
AD CRABLE
First, the old farm was to be a commercial sports park. Then a retirement center. Then, ballfields. Then, possibly, a development with rows upon rows of homes. Now, it looks like most of the woods, hollows, fields and boulders in Mount Joy Township will be preserved in its natural state. I......
2008-09-16 09:40:00
AD CRABLE
Can you believe how much it costs to buy... No, not gas. Not milk either. I'm talking birdseed. Right about now is the time most people lug home those big bags of birdseed to stock backyard feeders and settle in for a feathered spectacle that continues through winter.
...
2008-09-02 14:51:00
AD CRABLE
The first time Carl H. Ernst came across a copperhead snake, he was a lad messing around the River Hills in Pequea. His dad killed the fascinating creature, as everyone did then. The last time Ernst went on about copperheads was to the Lancaster Herpetology Society a month ago, his first talk i......
2008-08-19 07:56:00
AD CRABLE
Ernie Wilson thinks he just might be the best coyote howler in the world. As Pennsylvania's newly crowned state champion predator caller, the Conestoga resident will get a chance to prove it this weekend in Kansas City at the World Predator Calling Competition. Using mouth calls he ......
2008-08-05 09:50:00
AD CRABLE
It is indeed an irony of the natural world that the largest colony of the beautiful regal fritillary butterfly east of the Mississippi is on a military reservation where the earth is blasted asunder, churned up and burned over. An ancient North American species, the regal is a large reddish-ora......
2008-07-29 09:30:00
AD CRABLE
As trucks thundered across the Route 30 bridge above them, three men in chest waders quietly slipped into the Susquehanna and began jabbing the shoreline water with stunning bolts of electric current. Momentarily dazed, fingerling fish bubbled up and were quickly netted, measured and scrutinize......
2008-07-22 10:46:00
AD CRABLE
Only a few years ago, it all seemed so promising. American shad, once a prized spring staple of locals' diet and an economic linchpin up and down the Susquehanna, at last seemed headed for a comeback amid a multi-state and federal restoration plan. Visions of again catching the silvery......
2008-07-21 10:00:00
AD CRABLE
More developments to report on Lancaster County's now-you-see-them, now-you-don't peregrine falcons. First the good news. Strasburg birder Tom Raub, who discovered a pair of falcons hanging out on the Norman Wood Bridge near the Holtwood Dam in May, has also spotted a pair perched on th......
2008-07-08 08:43:00
AD CRABLE
It's shaping up to be Pennsylvania's own gold rush. And like that freewheeling time in the old West, extracting the deep but potentially oh-so-profitable natural gas from the dark Marcellus Shale formation is generating some wild speculation. Swindle, conspiracy, happy days are here aga......
2008-07-01 09:04:00
DIANE BITTING
For years I've wanted to see with my own eyes the stony grandeur of Arizona's Grand Canyon. In June, I gazed gratefully upon the spectacular vista of buttes and plateaus layered in hues of red and sand. But I got more than just a bird's eye view from the South Rim of Grand Cany......
2008-07-01 09:00:00
STAFF
Tom Smithgall, senior vice president for development with High Real Estate Group, was doing a job inspection recently on the sixth floor of the Marriott Lancaster at Penn Square hotel building site when he heard this strange screeching sound. Following his ears, he found this cockatiel perched on a ...
2008-06-24 14:47:00
AD CRABLE
"Hen-RY! Fetch me some water!" "There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza." It'd been 40 years, at least, but the refrain from the old campfire song unleashed a cascade of fond memories of summer camps and campouts with friends. Last Friday night, ......
2008-06-17 07:51:00
AD CRABLE
In the latest convulsion to rip through the hunting community, particles of lead from bullets have been found in deer meat donated to the hungry in three states. Minnesota, North Dakota and Iowa all at least temporarily halted meat donations. Is there a nationwide health threat of lead poi......
2008-06-10 09:44:00
AD CRABLE
Since he was 2, Mark (not his real name) has had a fascination with space. As the home-schooled boy has grown, the fathomless wonder of the firmament has taken even deeper root. "When he talks to all his friends about it, they say, 'You're boring,'" says the mother of the ......
2008-06-03 08:09:00
AD CRABLE
The meadow vole, having spent the night confined in a live trap baited with rolled oats on a farm just west of Millersville, responds to its liberation by sinking its teeth into the hand of David Zegers. The Millersville University biology professor has taken precautions, but he still feels the......
2008-05-27 10:16:00
AD CRABLE
What is it with ticks this year? A Manheim Township couple hiking the less-than-1-mile Turkey Hill Trail in Manor Township last week found five ticks — two on themselves and three roaming around the car — on their return. That's nothing. Walking several times along a river ......
2008-05-20 10:17:00
AD CRABLE
When Russell Guthrie moved to Lancaster County in 2003 it was not so much the architect-designed house in Manor Township that caught his eye. It was the short section of the West Branch of Little Conestoga Creek that flowed through his property at the bottom of the hill. "When I saw the pl......
2008-05-13 09:20:00
AD CRABLE
In how many places in Lancaster County can you find more than 1,000 mating toads, an old lime kiln, caves, gobbling turkeys, veins of intersecting streams and deep-hollow solitude — all within a minute or two walk from a road? Such a place exists in relative obscurity on about 130 acre......
2008-05-06 09:23:00
AD CRABLE
For nine years now, Lancaster County anglers have been blessed to have a world-class fishery in their backyard. Just over an hour's drive from the city, the Susquehanna River empties into the head of the Chesapeake Bay on what's called the Susquehanna Flats. Here, each spring, o......
2008-04-29 14:38:00
AD CRABLE
It's been a wild two weeks since I invited the public to help find Lancaster's elusive peregrine falcons. Respond you did. I got reports of peregrine sightings in East Hempfield Township, School Lane Hills, Millersville and the city. Several turned out to be hawks. Researching......
2008-04-29 14:10:00
AD CRABLE
Fire from an errant machine gun round has burned about 50 acres of the only known regal fritillary butterfly home in the northeastern United States at Fort Indiantown Gap. Military officials said the fire occurred during training exercises between March 28 and April 18. Joe Hovis, a milita......
2008-04-23 07:02:00
AD CRABLE
The weather is nice. People wander outdoors. It's great to be outside — unless, too many times, you're a baby rabbit, skunk, squirrel, groundhog, fawn deer, birds or any number of common wildlife. It happens every spring. People come across cute baby critters in the woods or their......
2008-04-15 08:30:00
AD CRABLE
For the third straight spring, two peregrine falcons are being sighted in downtown Lancaster. Will they again seemingly disappear into thin air? Do they have a high-rise nest somewhere that will finally be located? The answer might depend on citizen scientists such as you. It'll tak......
2008-04-08 08:30:00
AD CRABLE
Ask homeowners along State Street and Lancaster-area neighborhoods such as Grandview Heights and Hamilton Park what's special about where they live and trees is sure to come up. That's in keeping with studies that show trees are often the most important factor among people who love thei......
2008-04-01 10:57:00
AD CRABLE
"There, ahead all he could see, as wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun, was the square top of Kilimanjaro."
Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro
Timothy Patterson is not a technical climber. Nor d......
2008-03-25 10:24:00
AD CRABLE
After a rousing success last year, early trout season returns to Lancaster County at 8 a.m. Saturday. Angler surveys showed that moving the opening day up by two weeks in Lancaster and 17 other southeastern counties last year boosted opening-day attendance by about 10 percent and did not result......
2008-03-11 09:35:00
AD CRABLE
It's dawn and the natives are getting restless as I pull into the parking lot of the Willow Point Trail at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area. It's a half-mile walk on the paved trail to the lake, but the air is already seized by the otherwordly din of tens of thousands of snow ge......
2008-02-26 13:53:00
AD CRABLE
How soon we forget. If you think hunting, fishing, conservation and our appreciation of the outdoors hasn't changed dramatically through the generations, just skim through very old editions of this newspaper. Take this item from the Aug. 12, 1902, New Era: A Hummelstown man was grav......
2008-02-19 11:36:00
AD CRABLE
Centre County — Zero degrees — maybe below. Wind gusts up to 51 mph. Minus 31 wind chill. Eight inches of new snow. White-out conditions. Talk about getting out of your comfort zone. And to think just a few days ago I was afraid my annual winter backpacking trip might be a dud.......
2008-02-12 10:20:00
AD CRABLE
Much of the time, you could play football on the barren bedrock below the Holtwood Dam. But when high flows are pushing down the Susquehanna and water is frothing over the 55-foot-high concrete dam, the river bottom becomes a seething whitewater. It was one of those kind of days in the ......
2008-02-05 09:38:00
AD CRABLE
What's killing the Susquehanna and Juniata rivers' prized smallmouth bass? For several years, anglers and guides have been pleading for action on the mysterious die-offs, poor survival and cigarette-burn-like lesions on juvenile bass in the summer. In addition to the disconcerting ......
2008-01-29 09:06:00
AD CRABLE
First off, vegetarians, vegans, PETA members and subscribers to Bon Appetit magazine should read further at their own risk. It all started over at the huntingpa.com Web site when some guy from Cambria County on the trapping forum wondered i......
2008-01-22 09:00:00
AD CRABLE
Bernard Brown is an urban herper. For the longest time, he thought that was an oxymoron. Herpers are people who like to overturn logs and rocks trying to find snakes, frogs, salamanders and the like to photograph and marvel at. When the 31-year-old Brown moved to West Philadelphia sever......
2008-01-15 09:10:00
AD CRABLE
We now know, to our everlasting joy, that 3,500 acres of River Hills forest on both sides of the Susquehanna Gorge will be preserved for us all, and not parceled out for development by PPL. Such natural jewels as Shenk's Ferry Wildflower Preserve, the breathtaking Pinnacle, Face Rock and Ur......
2008-01-08 10:29:00
AD CRABLE
Philip Carroll of Marietta joined the Marines right out of high school in 2004. One of the things he missed most during two years of intense training at Camp Lejeune, N.C., was hunting. This past May the reconnaissance Marine was injured, losing 80 percent of the use of his right arm. &quo......
2008-01-03 08:19:00
AD CRABLE
Snow was melting and giving off a vapory fog not conducive to picking up 4½-inch round orange clay pigeons zipping through the air at various angles at 40 to 50 miles per hour. Nevertheless, 79-year-old Eloise Gouge stepped into position among a group of men, some of whom were not yet bo......
2007-12-18 07:45:00
AD CRABLE
EDITOR'S NOTE: Every deer season, no matter how bad the weather or how scarce the deer seem to be, has its memorable hunts. Here are six.
Alpha buck
Nobody in the Seventeenth Ward Camp had ever seen a buck like it: This big a deer in the solid f......
2007-12-04 09:00:00
AD CRABLE
For a week, anyway, it was most intriguing. Some deer hunter in the River Hills of southern Lancaster County could have shot the new Pennsylvania record buck. A 240-pound, 15-point breeder buck, which a South Carolina man was to pay $10,000 to hunt in a Drumore Township game preserve, jump......
2007-12-04 09:36:00
AD CRABLE
Another chapter was added to the rich bible of stories recorded inside the Sugar Run and Mill Creek hunting camps in Tioga County when newlyweds D. Cory and Sarah Landis each got their deer on opening day. There are few deer-hunting scenarios that haven't been experienced by three genera......
2007-11-27 07:35:00
AD CRABLE
Same time, same place, exactly one year later I am here on top of Breakneck Ridge, staring impatiently into the darkness, trying to stop the sweating from the long climb up. It's the opening day of West Virginia's rifle deer season — a week earlier than Pennsylvania's &mdas......
2007-11-13 09:16:00
AD CRABLE
It's been seven years and 3 million dead deer later since the reign of antler restrictions and deer-reduction policies. With another gun season opening Nov. 26, the debate still rages. Are there more bigger-racked bucks out there now than before? Have we finally brought deer numbers......
2007-11-06 09:40:00
AD CRABLE
Her elementary school teacher in Manheim Township ordered her to quit hauling bugs to class for show and tell. In college, her parents tried to guide her into a career as a teacher. Even after she rebelled and earned her degree in entomology, Susan Cobey couldn't figure out at first ho......
2007-10-30 09:00:00
AD CRABLE
My kind of town. If you're a fly fisher for wild trout, you're drawn to any community that bills itself as "a small town with a population of 11,000 trout and about 1,000 people." Drive into this Gold Rush-born ranch burg surrounded by three snow-capped mountain ranges......
2007-10-23 11:02:00
AD CRABLE
In less than 10 years, the lower Susquehanna River has gone from one of the country's best smallmouth bass fisheries to one in serious decline. That much is fact. What is not yet fact is why. Why would a river with ideal smallie habitat be sending belly-up carcasses downstream and......
2007-10-09 10:53:00
AD CRABLE
Editor's note: This is the last of a two-part listing of favorite Sunday drives around Lancaster County as nominated by New Era readers.
Charlestown country
1 Just north of Blue Rock Road (Route 999), Charlestown Road is an old, sc......
2007-10-02 10:20:00
AD CRABLE
Editor's note: This is the first of a two-part listing of favorite Sunday drives around Lancaster County as nominated by New Era readers.Timeless Lime Valley
1 This my contribution. In how many places in Lancaster County can y......
2007-09-25 11:50:00
AD CRABLE
In the beginning, wind power seemed like the perfect poster child for the alternative-energy crusade. It was an earth-friendly means of loosening the strangle of foreign oil. Unlike its bedrock predecessor in Pennsylvania — coal — wind turbines promised cheap energy without scarr......
2007-09-19 14:14:00
AD CRABLE
Marietta Borough officials and residents are banking on a wooded trail to infuse the river town with a new wave of visitors. In a massive two-day cleanup of the riverfront a couple weekends ago, nearly 200 civic-minded people swarmed across the town's river park — some in boats and mu......
2007-09-18 09:14:00
AD CRABLE
Chronic wasting disease, West Nile virus, avian flu, Lyme disease — and now deer dropping dead in western Pennsylvania from epizootic hemorrhagic disease. For sportsmen, it can be bewildering — and scary — trying to keep up with the growing threats to wildlife and themselves....
2007-08-21 12:34:00
AD CRABLE
Almost heaven, West Virginia. CRASH! We are only 2 miles into the Mountain State and our family vacation only several hours old when the doe streaks from the night and bolts head-first into the passenger side of our station wagon. Remarkably, the twins slumber through the violent coll......
2007-08-14 09:30:00
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In 1979, Lancaster County made a $50,000 quick-claim deed payment to Penn Central Railroad for an abandoned 5-mile stretch of rail line in Mount Joy Township that had been inactive since being ravaged by Hurricane Agnes. The wooden ties were plucked and, presto, the county's first rail-t......
2007-08-07 08:35:00
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For pure unadulterated, free summer fun that's still as good as it ever was, nothing beats donning a pair of old sneakers and sloshing through a shaded stream. I like to wade the Susquehanna River this time of year, casting for smallmouth bass. It's a great way to beat the heat and cove......
2007-07-24 10:10:00
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The sad, slow decline of hunters in Pennsylvania has been well documented. The ranks of those who hunt fell 11 percent between 1995 and 2005. The latest figures show another 2 percent decline from last year. But against this downward spiral, those who trap or hunt furbearing animals are refu......
2007-07-17 14:28:00
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Kudzu — you know, the vine that ate the South — is turning up in Lancaster County and a new state eradication plan to snuff out the threat is targeting several local patches. Four stands equaling the largest found in Pennsylvania so far have been recently discovered near the Holtwoo......
2007-07-10 10:45:00
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Ernie E. Lehman Sr. grew up along the Appalachian Trail as a kid in Jonestown, Lebanon County. When he was 12 and a Boy Scout he first hiked a part of the famed pathway. He felt the pull then. He, his two brothers and a couple neighborhood kids would sometimes wander along it, even starting ......
2007-07-03 11:39:00
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Dave Solon remembers the evening two years ago when he casually flipped to the Discovery Channel, one of his favorites on TV. It was Shark Week and three men were diving to the ocean bottom to feed sharks by hand. "Gee, these guys are nuts!" he remembers thinking. But as he ......
2007-06-26 12:22:00
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The tree fort-looking bat condo just beyond the visitor's center at Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area has been a bust. Fortunately. Instead, a family of barn owls, one of the rarest — not to mention freaky-sounding — birds native to Pennsylvania, have taken up residence......
2007-06-19 12:31:00
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A new study has documented what many birdwatchers, sportsmen and those who listen to birdsong outside their windows have noticed for years: many of America's once-common birds are becoming uncommon. They are not in danger of dying out, but some of our most familiar and loved birds are......
2007-06-12 12:03:00
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For months, a male and female peregrine falcon, spied on from afar by local birdwatchers, have been hanging out on the Route 30 bridge near Columbia. No one could see what they were up to because they disappeared under the bridge, but their actions were tantalizingly parent-like. One falco......
2007-06-05 13:59:00
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Pennsylvania's hunting community can take a break from the deer-management controversy to harangue over another brouhaha: baiting. Citing inconsistent and sometimes unfair enforcement by game wardens, state legislators are considering two bills that would, for the first time, place a distan......
2007-05-30 08:53:00
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All those swarms of crows that bedevil Lancaster city and its suburbs each winter — they're from Canada, eh. That's one of the tidbits emerging halfway through a two-year study into the invading birds and what we — people, that is, — can do to make them stay in places ......
2007-05-22 12:03:00
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Even though he was declared mentally ill and an imminent danger to himself, Seung-Hui Cho breezed through background gun checks in Virginia and was easily able to buy the two handguns and ammo used to gun down 32 Virginia Tech students and professors. Could Cho just as easily have gotten the we......
2007-05-15 12:04:00
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All birdwatching eyes are on the Route 30 bridge at Columbia these days, apparently the home of Lancaster County's first peregrine falcon nest since a pair nested on nearby Chickies Rock in 1947. The discovery of the nest may also answer the mystery of where the peregrine that had ove......
2007-05-08 12:05:00
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3 youths, 3 gobblers in the bag Three local teens had plenty to crow — make that gobble — about on Pennsylvania's youth spring gobbler turkey hunt April 21. Mark Lefever, 15, a student at Lampeter-Strasburg High School, was hunting in Huntingdon County when the glorious mom......
2007-05-01 12:03:00
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Most people don't pay much attention to Pennsylvania's native reptiles and amphibians. And that's been part of the problem. They've been scantily studied so we don't know how many are out there and what kind of shape their populations are in. Regulations against killing and ......
2007-04-24 12:18:00
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The security guards at Park City mall don't carry guns, but Patrick Miller packs heat on his hip in plain view when he strolls amid the shoppers with his family. Miller, 30, of Atglen, has a permit to carry a concealed weapon, but he has worn his loaded semi-automatic 9 mm handgun in the op......
2007-04-17 12:15:00
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Through the haze, we can squint from the island in Biscayne Bay and see three things on the South Florida mainland: an above-ground landfill, a nuclear plant and the high rises of Miami. So why look up from paradise? Why indeed, when my daughter and I have a lush Florida key all to ourselves....
2007-04-10 12:03:00
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When you think of feral hogs, you think of the good ole boy southern states where a culture has grown up around hunting the rogue pigs. Remember the 1,100-pound "Hogzilla" shot in a Georgia swamp a couple years ago? Rumors began circulating a year or two ago that hogs that had es......
2007-04-03 11:56:00
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(Second of two stories) Michelle Barnes looked out at the 300 or so faces of mostly middle-aged and older men who like to camp, hike, hunt and fish and gave them the straight poop. "Future consumers don't look anything like the people in this room," said Barnes, vice presiden......
2007-03-27 12:10:00
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(First of 2 stories) If you like the outdoors, you likely can recount, on demand, a fond childhood memory of playing outside. Perhaps it was turning over rocks in a creek, or building a stick fort in the woods, or plopping down among waving grass in a field, feeling languid as the sun w......
2007-03-20 11:59:00
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Rarely have Lancaster County trout anglers been faced with so many dramatic changes as they gear up for the annual spring ritual. To wit:
A two-week earlier opening day in Lancaster and 17 other southeastern counties. The season begins on 26 streams and one lake in Lancaster County......
2007-03-13 12:05:00
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The National Rifle Association would like Mayor Richard Gray to step down from Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a growing coalition of 154 mayors from 44 states who vow to get tough on illegal gun possession. Not going to happen. The mayor says he has received one NRA form letter and about a h......
2007-03-06 13:56:00
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You may have read that President Bush wants to see the 35 million acres of land set aside for conservation and wildlife instead planted in corn to feed vastly expanded ethanol production. Federal agriculture officials have already said that no new enrollments will be offered under the Conservat......
2007-02-28 07:18:00
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If you were a Dartmouth-educated equity trader on Wall Street, what's the most abrupt lifestyle change you could imagine? How about flying, boating and guiding anglers to remote islands in the Bahamas, the Florida Keys and the canyons off the coast of New Jersey for the biggest sportfish in......
2007-02-20 13:31:00
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Any deep-winter backpacking trip worth its salt begins with a hearty breakfast. Since we're headed for the Old Loggers Path in northeastern Lycoming County, I should be ordering the Lumberjack Slam on my menu at the Denny's Restaurant in Selinsgrove. I settle on something only s......
2007-02-13 12:08:00
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Chances are, if you plant a tree in your yard, you'll never get to enjoy its shade. That's partly because most people sell their homes within seven years. But there's another reason, one that's driving John Condoluci crazy these days. Most — yes, not just many, b......
2007-02-06 13:03:00
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The outraged, sometimes hateful, letters are flowing into my inbox about the animal-cruelty charges brought recently against the Elstonville Sportsmen's Association for holding a live turkey shoot with bows and arrows last fall. "Real justice could only be served by subjecting thos......
2007-01-30 12:34:00
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Several weeks ago, I wrote about three generations of the Aungst family hunting together and getting bucks in Lycoming County. Hey, you never read about mother and daughter getting their deer together, Bill Cooney, of the Manheim area, wrote me last week. "The proud dad and husband" attach......
2007-01-23 14:28:00
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The haunting, far-away look of its eye notwithstanding, nothing embodies a wolf as much as its howl. Visitors to the Wolf Sanctuary of Pennsylvania, north of Lititz, have long been able to look a wolf in the eye. Now, they can hear the call of the wild, too. The 26-year-old, nonprofit sanc......
2007-01-09 15:08:47
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That’s nice, you say, three generations of a Lancaster County family all getting a deer. But let me set the stage to put this heartwarming feat from the steep mountains of Lycoming County in perspective. Aungst and 15 other members of Pine Ridge Hunting Camp got zero bucks last year. They like......
2007-01-02 14:25:06
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Let’s start with Orconectes rusticus, the rusty crayfish. A native of the Ohio River Basin, this large 3-5-inch amphibian has made its way into Pennsylvania. That’s not good. A 1999 study by Millersville University biology professor Dr. John Wallace and his students turned up the rusties in nu......
2006-12-19 14:54:36
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Regardless of what you think about them — “all trespass vehicles” to critics — ATVs are riding a crest of popularity with numbers Pennsylvania’s land managers can’t ignore. There are some 230,000 registered ATVs in the state. About an equal number are ridden illegally, bringing the total to about......
2006-12-19 14:48:35
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Recently, the Pennsylvania Game Commission dispatched its peregrine falcon coordinator to the top of Lancaster’s tallest building to investigate. On a windswept late-fall day, F. Arthur McMorris peered over the open-air, very top of the building and liked what he saw. Bird carcasses, bones, fe......
2006-12-05 12:45:26
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But the thought of contaminating the mountainside and telegraphing our presence with all that smoke horrified me. Thus, “camp” has always been in our ridgetop house with the satellite TV and the hot showers. Then I read a story a couple years ago about how these Texas hunters get a buck each year......
2006-11-28 14:00:31
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Ray Rynier, 46, of Millersville, ended that long drought on Nov. 4 when he shot a nine-pointer at dawn’s first light on game lands near Muddy Run Recreation Area. Rynier had taken 10 antlerless deer through the years, but not a buck, though he has missed a few. He got his first deer when he wa......
2006-10-31 13:43:13
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A Pennsylvania Game Commission wildlife conservation officer there thought he did but could not find any sign of a shot deer or spent rifle shell. Then WCO Linda Swank of southern Lancaster County showed up with her canine partner, Officer 0002, more informally known as Onyx. Within minutes, t......
2006-10-10 13:24:55
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“All of a sudden, a bird head plopped down at my feet,” she recalls with a grimace. Rob Ecklin, whose company owns Lancaster’s tallest building, arrived at work one morning to find an owl’s head near the doorway on North Queen Street. Angel Berdecia, a county Parks Department laborer assigned ......
2006-10-03 13:56:24
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At such times the frustrated anglers would no doubt be surprised to learn that fishers statewide actually catch more than the total number of trout stocked by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission. Turns out trout anglers — even those on put-and-take streams — are practicing catch and release......
2006-09-26 13:09:16
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Since they burst on the scene 15 years ago or so, there has been pressure to film ever-bigger bucks taken live with movie-quality clarity. Typically, the videos feature big-name hunters taking bruiser bucks from pricey outfitters or even high-fenced preserves. A couple years ago, three New Jer......
2006-09-19 14:14:45
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For a long time it was for farming, more recently for housing developments. Today, only 13 percent of the county is forested. So it’s a bit icono-clastic when someone intentionally goes about creating a woodland here. The Lancaster County Conservancy is going to be that fish out of water......
2006-09-12 13:19:10
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He had come down off the Appalachian Trail for a day because of a worsening case of poison ivy. When you are trying to backpack 2,174 miles from Maine to Georgia barefoot, poison ivy on your piggies is more than a nuisance. From the looks of things, Zaleski’s treads had other problems after mo......
2006-09-05 13:40:09
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You may chuckle skeptically, just as the proud residents of Missouri did about 25 years ago. Then these prehistoric-looking creatures started showing up on motorists’grills. “If I drive from here to St. Louis (about 250 miles) right now I’ll probably see 60 to 80 dead armadillos in the road,” ......
2006-08-29 14:02:32
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It takes only a few steps to be swallowed by a sea of swaying grasses and yellow-tipped wildflowers higher than my head. As I make my way through the maze of connecting trails, crickets chirp, grasshoppers buzz and the dry tall-grass stalks clink against each other, creating a pleasant natural ch......
2006-08-29 13:58:54
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It’s made the news for its contribution to acid rain, smog and mercury air pollution, as well as fish kills. The utility is spending some $900 million to address those matters. Among anglers, it’s famous because its warm-water discharge allows them to catch smallmouths in the depths of winter....
2006-08-15 13:14:54
By Ad Crable
What are we to make of it? Is it simply a logical marketing decision to discontinue a product not selling well in certain stores, as Wal-Mart says? Or a further erosion of choice for law-abiding citizens as some maintain. After all, Wal-Mart was the largest seller of rifles and shotguns in the......
2006-08-01 12:47:48
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What makes best? Camp sites that are secluded in private copses of trees, or those that have a lot of amenities such as electrical hookups? For some people, camping is mostly about socializing with other people. Matt Willen, a professional writing professor at Elizabethtown College, wrestled with......
2006-07-26 12:22:21
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Paul Slusser said he’d fished Catawissa Creek all his life but had never caught a single fish. He sure would like to. Now, if you weren’t from the area and stumbled across the Catawissa anywhere along its 42-mile journey from its mountainous headwaters in Luzerne County to its mouth on the Susque......
2006-07-11 13:13:00
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That’s already the most since 1982 and on a pace that could break the record 42 people who died in boating accidents in 1972 — a time when there a lot fewer boats around than there are now. There also have been at least 22 boating injuries so far this year. “It’s like the apple that falls out ......
2006-06-28 14:34:16
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The state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources already is sliding down that slope, actually. A feasibility study commissioned by DCNR says placing a 15-25-room “rustic lodge” inside 318-acre S.B. Elliott State Park in Clearfield County makes sense and cents. Rooms would go for $63 to ......
2006-06-20 13:05:21
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I follow their flight to the rafters where other birds already are stationed. I count eight of what appear to be English house sparrows. They hardly seem alarmed at their predicament. Heck no. Big-box stores are becoming the barns of yesteryear. Birds, especially people-tolerant species such a......
2006-06-06 12:53:46
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“I wanted some remnant of that to remain for my children,” she says. “ I just think we’re losing some things we took for granted.” So the 46-year-old cleared a space in the backyard of her home on the edge of Rohrerstown “in the middle of suburbia” and fashioned it to attract all manner of wildli......
2006-05-30 12:06:06
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But it’s also likely you don’t know if there really is such a river and, if so, where it flows. Terry Summersgill of Lancaster knows. He’s been taking languid floats way down the Suwannee in northern Florida since 1988. “It renews the soul, that’s what that river does to you,” says Summersgill......
2006-05-23 14:18:25
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When a state official was called out to investigate a fish kill on a small stream through Solanco farm country several years ago, the investigator was stunned to see wild brown trout among the belly-up fish. Not long after, when the local chapter of the Donegal Chapter of Trout Unlimited was fish......
2006-05-17 14:48:05
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This mighty titan, which once accounted for one in every four trees in the Eastern hardwood forests from Maine to Alabama, was the primary food source for wildlife, from deer to birds, and was a linchpin in the lumber industry. Death from the infamous foreign blight that first appeared in trees i......
2006-05-03 12:07:45
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I don’t know exactly how I knew, but I thought, “falcon!” I looked up and darn if there wasn’t one perched high on an alcove of the Griest Building. I would never had seen the rare sight without my ears. And so it is with an increasing number of birdwatchers who become “birdhearers” and are ab......
2006-04-25 13:02:45
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They are after big, bruising fish. And no way of catching is more fun than getting them to attack a topwater lure, known as a popper, in a fearsome boil. Such blow-ups by 40-pound fish can make short work of the lures, their finish and even the hooks. So when a lure emerges that takes a beatin......
2006-04-18 13:07:13
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As he drove by, he was astounded to see the telltale white regal head of a bald eagle. What on earth is an eagle doing way out here in farm country and so far from the Susquehanna River, he thought. Indeed, there has been a veritable invasion of eagles inland into center-Lancaster farming areas t......
2006-04-11 12:43:59
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Next year, for example, trout anglers will get fewer but bigger trout statewide. Responding to wide angler sentiment, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission will start stocking 30-percent larger trout in 2007. The average size will rise from about 10 inches to approximately 11 inches. That ......
2006-04-04 13:15:07
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Many hatchery trout, says the waterways conservation officer, bolt from stocked streams around Lancaster County as soon as they are dumped into the water. “After we stock Hammer Creek, I find trout in the Conestoga River at Bridgeport. I’ve seen guys carry trout upstream in buckets and the trout ......
2006-03-28 12:43:01
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He remembers digging garden worms and his mother taking him fishing in Mill Creek. “It’s those exciting moments of your life that you don’t forget,” he says. And that, mainly, is why he collects old fishing stuff. The Manheim Township man has acquired several thousand items in more than 30 ......
2006-03-21 13:54:08
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“It was dead water,” agrees Marvin Esh, one of those Amishmen. “You couldn’t tell the creek was flowing and there was scum on top.” In front of Putnam, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a Trackhoe was anchored in the middle of the stream, lifting and placing 2-ton boulders into......
2006-03-14 14:09:06
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Haven’t the faintest idea what I’m talking about, you say? If you’ve ever heard the deafening trilling of spring peepers or wood frogs in the spring, or peered into shallow water at tadpoles, you’ve been exposed to these small but vital bodies of temporary water. Because they dry up at some po......
2006-03-07 13:33:36
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Now, here was the Brooklyn transplant blasting away with her .367 magnum Smith & Wesson at a 9-inch paper plate representing the body of a would-be intruder in her Bird-in-Hand home. “You look at me and you think I wouldn’t hurt a fly — but I would to protect my husband,” says the disabled 48-yea......
2006-02-28 14:18:31
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As he got older, the 18-year-old Penn Manor High School senior not just fantasized about it, he made it a life goal. The Mountville-area resident took a giant step toward that achievement Feb. 19. He and 44 of the nation’s best anglers from 15 to 18 years old squared off against each other in the......
2006-02-21 12:49:00
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Seeing a cougar in Pennsylvania is kind of like seeing a flying saucer. There are others who have seen the same thing and assure you you aren't alone. But to the majority, you're just seeing things, if not slightly daffy.
No one has yet proved the existence of unidentified flying objects....
2006-02-14 13:29:00
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Even after a year, there are almost daily calls or e-mails from people around the state who say — sometimes sheepishly, but more often adamantly — that they've seen a mountain lion.
Dr. Dennis Wydra, a recently retired professor of education from Mansfield State University, in...
2006-02-07 12:13:30
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So far, big-game hunter Edward D. Yates of Wrightsville has chalked up an amputated left toe from frostbite, a badly fractured ankle from a fall that required a metal plate and pins, as well as permanent heart damage from a rare, often fatal, disease contracted while hunting with Pygmies in Africa....
2006-01-31 13:18:54
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What’s this? Is that music in the mountain air? Sure enough, the Grateful Dead was following us. I located the source: an iPod plugged into an exterior speaker strapped to the chest of my 17-year-old nephew. The iPod stopped working soon after, but, as we shall see, the youth movement continue......
2006-01-30 13:53:09
Ad Crable
How can people butcher my name? Let us count the ways. My name, officially Ad Allen Crable III, has always carried some baggage. From the beginning. I am actually the fourth, but there was some kind of snafu early on about a senior not being used when it was supposed to, or used twice — I’ve n......
2006-01-30 13:52:36
Ad Crable
How can people butcher my name? Let us count the ways. My name, officially Ad Allen Crable III, has always carried some baggage. From the beginning. I am actually the fourth, but there was some kind of snafu early on about a senior not being used when it was supposed to, or used twice — I’ve n......
2006-01-24 12:51:31
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Soon, however, Hilmar Hagen, 72, Barclay White, 83, Ron Schmieder, 70-something, and a few other residents in the Willow Valley Lakes retirement complex had formed the nucleus for the Willow Valley Fishing Club. Minimum age: 65. “And there are no rules — we’re fishermen,” says Schmieder. The c......
2006-01-10 13:03:34
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I have read “Owl Moon,’’ one of my favorite children’s books, to my daughters many times and we were enthralled at the story of a farmer wordlessly taking his daughter into the shadowy night woods to call in a great horned owl. But I never really considered it a pastime within my capabilities unt......
2006-01-03 13:45:00
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So why is the newly released, award-winning documentary “Grizzly Man” so mesmerizing and provoking such strong love-hate reactions in people? To some, Treadwell is almost reviled as an egomaniacal fool who ignored warnings to avoid close contact with North America’s largest predator and got what ......
2005-12-20 13:39:29
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Rifle, you say? Wrong. Archaeologists say it’s the atlatl, a simple handheld device with which 5- to 8-foot arrow-like darts are hurled at speeds exceeding 100 mph. Of course, that was thousands of years ago when woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers gave new meaning to the term, “big game.”...
2005-12-19 14:08:12
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For one thing, this was the 55-year-old New Holland man’s first bear hunt and he was treating it more as an opportunity to scout for the upcoming buck season. In fact, in 40 years of hunting for big game — a lot of stealthy time spent in the woods — he’d never even seen a bear. So, it still se......
2005-12-13 14:28:18
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Hess’s Butcher Shop of Willow Street, one of the largest deer processors in Lancaster County, hasn’t done it for three years. They and other local deer butchers are part of a slowly growing trend among Pennsylvania processors to only take deer that have been skinned. That has left some local h......
2005-11-29 13:09:37
Ad Crable
Another opening day for Pennsylvania’s deer-hunting, blaze-orange army. I hung out at Hess’s Butcher Shop and everyone was scratching their heads at how few hunters had shown up with deer by early afternoon. Several hunters who did stop to drop off deer grumbled that there seemed to be too few......
2005-11-15 12:43:16
Ad Crable
If he or she ends up a hunter, chances are those first journeys to the mountains that seemed a country away frame lifelong memories. The excited atmosphere of a knot of grownups bent on taking dream bucks, the plotting, the advance scouting, the tips, the warmth of the stove or fireplace, the dow......
2005-11-01 12:40:54
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The snake sunk its tiny teeth into the woman’s hand. Surprised, she jumped, yelled and ran to a table where paramedics cleaned the tiny wound and gave her a Band-Aid. The men at the event played with more machismo and higher stakes as they sacked 15 poisonous western diamondback rattlesnakes — im......
2005-10-26 12:35:43
Jane Holahan
Of course you would. The woman is portrayed as a saint on “Commander in Chief,” which is one of the most popular new shows on TV. Mackenzie Allen is smart and savvy. She is only concerned about what’s best for the country, not her own political career. She’s tough as nails. And she’s a good mo......
2005-10-25 13:23:23
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After all these years, it was their first hunt together. Vincent’s first hunt ever. That Vincent Wilson was sitting there in a wheelchair with a cocked crossbow next to his father, straining to see the next whitetail, is testament to the power of collective caring. *** Wilson has spastic ce......
2005-10-18 12:57:48
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No need to get creeped out. Just harmless chimney swifts, diving down into your chimney at dusk and clinging, heads up, to the rough surface to catch a few z’s. Night is the only time they are not in flight. At dawn, they hightail it out of there for a full day on the wing eating insects. Unle......
2005-10-11 13:31:35
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Though financial and technical details are still being finalized, live video of a prolific pair of bald eagles nesting on a transmission tower along the Susquehanna River may be beaming into your computer screen shortly after Christmas. PPL and the Pennsylvania Game Commission are working furious......
2005-10-04 13:33:40
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Pennsylvania has its own avian whad’ya know of sorts. New evidence suggests the sandhill crane, a long-legged bird mostly of boreal forests or southern United States wetlands, is breeding in Pennsylvania. So is the Eurasian collared dove, an Asian bird that made its way to Florida in the 1970s......
2005-09-27 13:25:24
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Now they do. Frank Haas, a well-known birder from Narvon, has co-authored “Birds of Pennsylvania” as part of a state-by-state series published by Lone Pine Publishing of Auburn, WA. Roger Burrows, a Lone Pine staff writer, assisted. “It’s more for beginner birders. It gives them a quick look a......
2005-09-13 13:07:01
Tim Buckwalter
For three days we had hiked, swam, dined and slept in the shadow of the Arenal Volcano as it rumbled and popped quietly just two miles away, continuing a 37-year pattern of near-daily activity. Now, as if bidding us farewell on our final evening, the mountain let loose with what sounded like a cr......
2005-09-06 13:43:07
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He tried to disguise it as Dark Score Lake in his 1998 small-town ghost story “Bag of Bones.” But I knew its real name was Kezar Lake and had determined it would be the setting for my first foray into the Pine Tree State. I had done an extensive Internet search to find one of Maine’s 6,000 lakes ......
2005-08-30 14:04:52
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Not Brian Gish. Sure he fell a mere 370 miles short of his goal to paddle the length of the Susquehanna River, from Cooperstown, N.Y., to Havre de Grace, in 11 days inside a small, 34-pound kayak. Yes, after 60 miles, he limped home — literally. But the 27-year-old East Donegal Township nat......
2005-08-16 14:25:07
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We’d pedaled mountain bikes on a mountain crest north of Lebanon to three of his favorite spots for finding eastern timber rattlesnakes without seeing a single scale. Gehman had peered under rocks with flashlights, turned others over, and nothing. Fears of the worst that could happen started i......
2005-08-10 11:06:30
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Everyone thought it was the usual summer doldrums when smallies go into lockdown until adjusting to warmer water. Someone on the Riversmallies.com Web site even posted a Top Ten Reasons Why Great Fisherpersons Are Getting Skunked On The Susquehanna Lately. Number 9: All of the bass are now on ......
2005-07-26 12:42:36
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An uncommonly clear and cold stream with native brown trout, no less. Solanco’s heavily wooded Fishing Creek Valley, steeped in beauty and history, is truly one of the county’s natural gems. That’s why the Lancaster County Conservancy began a nature preserve there in 1995 with a single donatio......
2005-07-12 13:17:46
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Take Jason Lyon of Willow Street. The 27-year-old hunter had never hunted bears before. But when a friend invited him to a camp in New Brunswick, Canada, to hunt black bears, he leaped at the chance. Never mind that last year, the camp hunters never even saw a bear. “I’ve been ready to go s......
2005-07-05 13:43:01
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A final declaration on the national symbol is expected in October. Bald eagles would still be protected as a threatened species, but the status change is symbolic of Pennsylvania’s most successful effort to restore a nearly lost native citizen. From a precarious three nests in the early 1980s,......
2005-06-28 13:37:06
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“We both looked at each other. I thought it was the wind going through the treetops,” recalls Arlene Birt, of Ephrata. Still, she and her brother, Jeff Birt of Hanover, decided to wrap up taking a picture from a bridge over an old canal in the Lock 12 Historic Area, just across the Norman Wood Br......
2005-06-14 14:32:24
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These birds of happiness have a unique bond with humans. They nest in cavities but can’t peck their own. With old fence posts and dead trees disappearing, they increasingly rely on people to provide them homes. Many here are more than willing and the hold bluebirds have on local residents is mani......
2005-06-07 13:13:25
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As part of the controlled lockdown, Pennsylvania hunters may also be barred from bringing whole deer home that they shot in New York and other states. Those are two emergency measures on the agenda at the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s June 27-28 meeting in Harrisburg. To be sure, CWD, always ......
2005-05-31 12:59:36
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For the last two summers, we boatless anglers have led tortured lives, unable because of unrelentingly high water to wade into the wide Susquehanna to pursue smallmouths. Unless you were on good terms with a bass boat buddy, you and your cutoff shorts and old sneakers stayed in dry dock, imaginin......
2005-05-24 13:15:19
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Sixty percent of Pennsylvania voters in last Tuesday’s primary said yes, do it, while a more muted 52 percent of county voters approved the statewide referendum for Growing Greener II. First laid out by Govs. Tom Ridge and Robert Casey, and paid for by a surtax on the trash industry, the current ......
2005-05-17 13:09:14
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But man, I love the exotic flora and fauna. How I’d love to let my landscaping bent run free with all those lush, profusely blooming plants and trees. The variety of palm trees alone guards against conformity. I’m a four-seasons kind of guy and love each one of them, but being surrounded by ne......
2005-05-10 12:43:45
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Perhaps you came across one lumbering through the leaves and chuckled as it stopped dead in its tracks and retreated into its shell, tighter than a drum. Perhaps, like me, you were in your car and spotted one inching across the macadam. You pulled over and ran back, hoping you could get to the he......
2005-04-26 13:14:21
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Hunting turkeys in the fall is the most dangerous time afield for Pennsylvania hunters, according to a new study of 1,345 hunting-related shooting accidents in the state between 1987 and 1999. The report, by the Penn State College of Medicine, is the first to examine hunting shootings adjusted fo......
2005-04-19 14:08:46
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Since 2001, when he stumbled into it, Haley has tracked down abandoned railroad tunnels in Pennsylvania. He’s found 48 so far, mostly in what turn out to be special places off the beaten path. And he’s met a lot of neat people in his offbeat quest. “You’re about to learn the first thing about rai......
2005-04-12 15:20:08
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Bedazzled and bedeviled sums it up. That inability to hold one of those magnificent bruisers by the tail before easing it, hook jaw-first, back into Cattaraugus Creek in western New York ate at me all winter. In tormented dreams, I relived the ample battles, the runs and leaps of the fish and, al......
2005-04-05 13:43:22
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Starting with the upcoming Pennsylvania trout season, which kicks off Saturday, April 16, most of the guesswork is being taken out of in-season trout stockings. Except for Hammer Creek and Shearers Creek, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission has already announced on what days they will resto......
