Hunting for Autumn Adventure
By: Doug Oathout

There are guys who spend time watching hunting shows on the Outdoor Channel. Then there are guys who live those shows. Like Tony Wujcik, who spends a week each October waterfowl
hunting with 10 or 11 friends in Canada. Like Rob Collins, who spends part of October in Colorado hunting trophy-class mule deer. And like Chuck Davis, who spends each fall hunting in
Saskatchewan, Alberta, Kansas and Colorado.

For them, this time of year is about more than autumn leaves and holiday parties. It is
about crisp mornings afield, long waits and evening meals with good friends far from
home.

Chuck Davis gets the one that got away. None of them has actually been the subject of one of those hunting shows. But a deer Davis shot once was. That deer had an unusual rack that featured a bladed drop tine. The animal was the “one that got away” from Phil Phillips, one of the hosts of Scent Lok’s Wildlife Point Blank. “It was the
oddest thing,” Davis recalled. “I was sitting
there watching this show and I’m thinking,
‘That area looks familiar’ and then Phil ...
starts talking about this deer they saw but
couldn’t get a shot at, and then he shows it
and I think, ‘You know, I think that’s my
deer.’”

So he quickly sent Phillips an e-mail
asking if he had made the video in a certain
part of Kansas. “He called me about 11
that night and, sure enough, that was my deer,” Davis says. The deer that once played a cameo role on TV now has a permanent spot on the wall in Davis’ Millcreek home. It has plenty of company. It is one of a staggering number of mounts in his house, a collection that reflects the accomplishments of a now 54-year-old and unmarried hunter who has spent nearly 20 years – and tens of thousands of dollars – pursuing wild turkeys and big game all across North America. There are three antelope, three mule deer, one large elk and 17 white-tailed deer.

There’s a story behind every one, and Davis easily moves from one tale to the next. There’s the old deer with the palmated rack. There’s the elk he shot at 38 yards
with his bow. There is the 30½-inch-wide mule deer he worked five years to get. Then
there’s the black bear he shot to end a day in which he was charged twice by other bears.

“That was enough bear hunting for me,” he says. “I don’t ever need to do it again.”

He’s also stopped hunting elk and antelope. Now it is just wild turkeys and white-tailed deer. But he is passionate about hunting those species. That’s why he spends a week each spring in the mountains of Montana chasing turkeys and he spends nearly two months each fall hunting deer in Saskatchewan, Colorado, Kansas and sometimes Alberta.

This is an Alberta year. “I’ll leave the first week of November to start in Saskatchewan and Alberta,” he says. “I’ll come back for a few days around Thanksgiving before going to Colorado and Kansas.”

He figures he won’t be home until Dec. 16 or so. Davis, a real estate agent withColdwell Banker Select Realtors, credits his business partner, Alisa Gumino McGraw, with helping make it all work. “She takes care of everything when I’m gone,” he says. “I’m lucky that way.” But this type of hunting requires more than that. It also requires money and the patience to withstand minus-40-degree days. A single trophy deer hunt can cost about $5,500 when all the fees and travel
expenses are tallied. Then, if you’re fortunate enough to get an animal, there’s the
additional cost of taxidermy. “But there’s no guarantee you’ll get anything,” he says. “Remember, it’s called hunting. I’ve had hunts where I sat in the cold for a week and not got anything.
That can be tough. ... You need to keep in mind that not a lot of deer are killed each year that score over 170. They’re there, but you’ve got to be willing to hold out for them.” By score, he is referring to a method of measuring antler size that involves the length of each tine on the antler as well
as the width of the antler at certain spots. Generally, a trophy is regarded as anything over 140 for white-tailed deer. The behemoth mounts in his home – a collection that includes whitetails with gross scores of 161, 168, 171 and a whopping 192 – show he’s got the patience trophy-hunting
requires.

The waiting game pays off. Patience is what Tony Wujcik needed in September as the anticipation of another duck hunt in Canada was drawing close. “The e-mails and phone calls start sometime in August,” the 50-year-old Millcreek resident says. They say “eight weeks to go ... six weeks to go ... four weeks to go.” This is the sixth year Wujcik and up to 11 other guys who are part of
the local chapter of Ducks Unlimited have traveled to an area near Toronto for a four-day hunt. He asked that the precise location not be printed because, well, he’d prefer to keep the spot to
himself.

“It’s 6,000 acres of marsh, and we have about an 800-acre finger of it,” he explained. “And it’s a duck factory up there. A lot of birds are bred there – puddlers, especially.” Mallards, pintails, gadwells, widgeons, wood ducks. And geese. Lots and lots of geese. “The difference between here and there is the vastness of that marsh and ... how few other hunters there are,” Wujcik says. “You
roll that in with the great guys who go and it is easy see why I look forward to going.” As hunts go, this one’s cheap at $600 – including food, licenses and guide fees.

“It’s cheaper when you have so many guys sharing the cost,” he says.

They share the cost of the lodge, the gas up there, and the guide who secures permission from Canadian farmers to hunt their fields. “This is my Christmas
present,” he says. “This is what my wife and daughters give me every year.”

Robert Collins is newly married, which usually spells trouble for trophy hunters. But not for Collins, who travels to Colorado to hunt mule deer. “My goal is a 200 class,” he says. That’s huge, but he has the history
to support such a large expectation. He has already taken a 180-class mule deer with a rack that was 30 1/8th-inches wide. He’s also brought home five black bears, an 870-pound Alaska grizzly, a 60-inch moose and several caribou. He’s been to Alaska five times in the past seven years. He’s been to Nunavut in Canada, Colorado and Utah. A year ago, he brought home a mule deer, an antelope, two mountain lions and a bobcat. “I have ’em all in the house – all except the two mountain lions and bobcat,” he says. Those trophies are still being mounted by Scott Basile, a taxidermist in Meadville. He says his wife, Patty, doesn’t mind the creatures. “She knew what she was getting into,” says Collins, 43.

He says they have a good arrangement. “I take her on vacation and I get to go on a hunt,” he says. The hunts are important to Collins, who works hard for the money to pay for them. He is a funeral director for Roofner-Collins Funeral Home. He also has an excavating company, sells insurance, operates a gun shop and raises white-tailed deer. “I have 10 of them,” he says. Those endeavors have helped him achieve some great moments, including 21 nights in a tent in Alaska on a successful $12,500 bear, moose and caribou hunt in 2001. “I enjoy being outside,” he says. “If that’s all I could do, that’s all I would do.” It’s a sentiment shared by Wujcik and Davis.

And it helps to explain why they – and many others from this region – will spend part of this fall hundreds or even thousands of miles from home pursuing a passion.

It’s something non-hunters often struggle to grasp. But there are oments – like a quiet and clear sunrise over a marsh, the crunch of frozen leaves as a deer walks in, or the smile on a friend’s face at the end of a great day – that live in the mind forever. The trophies and memories brought home are reminders of such moments afield and incentive to go again and agaian