The best day of my week

Pennsylvania’s public lands are vast – that’s part of what makes them special. 

By Paula Piatt

Pennsylvania’s public lands are vast.

Large tracts of habitat – both woods and waters – that are home to all sorts of critters. And occasionally to the two-legged variety fortunate enough to pay a visit.

Roads intersect and double back to themselves. Hollows and small streams are followed until they disappear into the ground; the headwaters, eventually, for our oceans.

And then there’s the trees – tree after tree after tree after tree. After tree. They seem to go on forever. That’s not necessarily a good thing (unless you’re a trout living in those headwater streams). But not when you’re looking for something on the ground. Something smaller, than, say, a tree.

I recently spent the day on those forest and state game land roads in Tioga County, scouting for wild turkeys – the proverbial needle in a very large haystack.

It’s part of this week’s media tour; as TU’s Eastern Shale Gas Team prepares to showcase our northern forests to a group of writers. We’ll be hunting and fishing these tracts and bumping up against the development that, potentially, has only just started in the form of well pads, pipelines, and improved roads. How these two things co-exist is the message; that responsible energy development, while always important, takes on new meaning when you’re treading on Penns Woods.

But I’ve seen the construction sites on our public lands, and on this day, I was really hoping to avoid them, in search of the elusive wild turkey. That’s why acres and acres (and acres and acres) of public land was a bit overwhelming. Not good with a deadline bearing down; 4 or 5 guys at home packing their camo, 4 turkey dogs chomping at the bit to scatter the fall flock and two guides practicing to call them back into shotgun range.

And it didn’t help that as I drove along the “no winter maintenance” roads, it became painfully clear that a bumper crop of acorns had the birds scattered. They can pretty much eat where they are – there’s no flocking to a certain ridge or hollow. They, like me, are practically breaking an ankle on all the acorn marbles littering the forest floor.

A lot of good bird habitat was spied – especially those areas of the game lands where the Food and Cover Corps have been busy planting cover crops and creating hedgerows – but no birds spotted. I know they are there. Somewhere. Probably behind a tree.

Aside from the futility of the hunt, it was a great day. Who’s going to complain about a work day spent outdoors, walking the crisp fall woods? No, there were no fly rods or shotguns in tow. But taking to the woods and waters without the prospect of harvesting fish or fur puts it all in a different light. You slow down a bit and take it all in, not just the next pool in the stream or ridge on the mountaintop. It was the best day of my week.

So, yes, Pennsylvania’s public lands are vast. And, where possible, they should stay that way. For as much as I would have liked to have spotted those birds, they need those hiding places. They need a place to “get away,” too. Just as we need places to go and look for them.

Paula Piatt is TU’s eastern sportsmen organizer, based in Sayre, Pa.