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Last week I was on my annual in spection of food plots, mowing with my longtime friend, Joe Swart zlander, veteran of 35 years as foreman for the Pennsylvania Game Commission. We were in the Medix Run-Clearfield Mountains area on Game Lands #34. They were just finishing the mowing on the Mann-Ardel, also known years ago as the Krise Farm and the Lin coln Farm. The Lincoln Farm dates back to Civil War days when, it is reputed, President Lincoln gave General Grant a huge tract of land there. This is always a fine trip for me, as this area has been my “hap py hunting grounds” for more than half a century. In the early 1920's, the Game Commission bought eleven war rants of land from the lumber com panies and I helped survey them. I plowed the first food plot there on the Ardel Farm with a team of horses and helped Stoney Jeffer son, the first refugee keeper there, plant the first food plots. My father got $8.00 a day for me and the team. Today, it is a monument to those long ago days as one of the finest examples of land manage ment in the state. It still is my “happy hunting grounds.” Joe and his crew had just finish ed the mowing of more than sixty acres on the three farms and was moving to Game Lands #93 at Home Camp and then to Game Lands #77 at the Old Ground Hog Inn. These two Game Lands closer to DuBois are a favorite of DuBois and area hunters, as they have been producing fine sport for many years. A few years ago Joe super vised the building of the fine nile range on #77. Before they are finished with the cutting, they will have mowed more than 300 acres in his balewick. The mowing of food plots is vital to management as it starts a lush new crop of feed for all wildlife in the fall. With our most crops on the decline (fewer acorns) over the past few years, the mowing is a real bonus. I like to watch them, hoping to see a hen turkey and her poults catching grasshoppers on them. I have seen everything from elk to deer to bobcats to foxes, and now the whistle pig. Hunters are having their day on the cut fields. Some years ago and after the death of Mr. Carlson of Penfield, who was land manager for this district, Joe was acting manager until Jim Ramsey was stationed here. One fall he took me on an in spection survey that started on Hick Run in Cameron County with the elk and ended down at Bells Landing in Clearfield County. It took us two days, and I found some new woodcock and ringneck hun ting in the Bells Landing section. Jerry Becker is the present land manager, but I have not had the pleasure yet of becoming ac quainted with him. On our recent get-together, I said to Joe that I did not think I would ever live to see the brush stage come back to the mountains of the Medix Run area that made it a hunter's paradise in my youth. But it has in many areas and the foresters claim this is a bonus that the oak leaf rollers and the gypsy moth left us when they took the acorns. They opened up the overgrowth and let the sun get through. We found large areas growing that Joe said were “thick as hair on a dog.” With the antlerless deer permits in Elk County cut from last year's high of 11,180 to 8,050 we could see a fine comeback of whitetails. This brush stage is sure to help the grouse and snowshoe rabbits. Banner Year For Lake Erie Salmon It looks like 1984 may be a ban ner year for salmon in Lake Erie. The boats plying the waters of the big lake using their downriggers to prospect for silver in the form of coho salmon are sending back word that the salmon season has indeed begun. According to the Pennsylvania Fish Commission, catches of 50 fish per day have been reported from a single boat. The fish have been running from 5 to 10 pounds, and anglers are having their best suc cess working the depths with traditional lures and tinsel flies in depths ranging from 30 to 80 feet. Salmon anglers are reminded that the daily limit of salmon is eight fish per day (combined species) on the lake and in its tributaries, with a minimum size of 9 inches on the lake and 7 inches in the streams. After midnight, Labor Day, the creel limit for salmon in tributary streams will be reduced to three salmon per day, seven inches or longer.
Newspaper Details
DuBois Courier Express
DuBois, Pennsylvania, US
Thu, Aug 09, 1984
Page 20
Full Page
Clipped by
Leona G.
USA 20 Jul 2026
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