DEER & FROST: Ormsby resident Andy Heffner saw a McKean County resident featured recently in Pennsylvania Outdoors News.
According to Andy, Heather Greer of Mount Jewett shot a 12-point buck on Dec. 9 near Kane. He said the photo of the deer is impressive.
“These antlers — you ought to see how big around,” he said, explaining they looked to be a good three inches at the base.
Also on the topic of local hunters, Andy remembers a Willow Creek man named Gus Stewart who used to take in hunters when Andy was a child.
Stewart would open up his property to hunters from deer through bear seasons, and Andy’s mother used to help Mrs. Stewart make meals and clean for the visiting outdoorsmen.
Andy recalls seeing 20 to 25 deer hanging up at a time there, as well as some bears.
“He was well known for raising coonhounds,” Andy noted.
Also known for being a runner, Gus lost many animal mounts and running medals in a house fire once.
Andy passed along a simple activity for families, too.
“Have you ever looked at the frost that gathers on a window or a door and seen the pattern that gathers there?” he asked.
Andy has long been a admirer of the intricate and varied pictures that appear in the frost.
He never knew where the patterns came from.
“My grandmother would say, ‘God put it there,’” he said.
Last week, Andy saw poinsettias in the frost — a pattern he’d never noticed before. Patterns he has seen include oat or wheat sheaves and even animals or insects.
Recently seeing another window with frost that looked like different kinds of ferns “brought back memories of when the kids were small.”
They would make a game of it: Get the children’s attention, then tell them to look at the frost and say what they saw.
Do any of our readers know how the frost patterns are formed?
Similarly, Andy said another childhood game was to peel a banana, slice it and look for pictures.
“There’s different faces in different bananas,” he explained.
Andy shared another childhood activity he remembers, which we’ll include in a later column.
