Ralph Harrison Receives Rothrock Award

Ralph Harrison: Photo by John Eastlake-all rights reserved

 Each year, the Pennsylvania Forestry Association (PFA) recognizes an individual, organization, or group's significant contributions to the public recognition of the importance of Pennsylvania's forest resources in the same tradition and spirit of Dr. Joseph T. Rothrock, the first president of PFA.

This year's recipient was retired Bureau of Forestry Maintenance Supervisor, Ralph Harrison, Elk County native and resident of Dent’s Run.  Mr. Harrison received a plaque with the following inscription:

"Ralph Harrison has demonstrated a life-long interest in and concern for the elk of Pennsylvania.   He successfully motivated forestry professionals to develop specific elk habitat actions for the Elk State Forest management plan and provided keen observations and knowledge that were essential to the accomplishment of the plan.  A healthy elk herd now populates over six Pennsylvania counties.  Know for his educational talks, tours, and publications, Ralph is the individual most responsive for saving the Pennsylvania elk herd as a valuable component of today's Penn's Woods."

For those unfamiliar with Ralph Harrison I will reprint an edited version of a post from this blog , "Ralph Harrison Above and Beyond The Call Of Duty"  February 13, 2008, which will give the reader an understanding of the conditions under which Ralph Harrison became involved with the elk."

"Mr. Harrison was born in Dent’s run in 1928 and has lived there most of his life except for a stint in the military. Ralph went to work for what was then know as the Department of Forest and Waters in 1951 and worked for them for the next forty years, although the agency changed names over this period. It would take a book to cover his life and in fact Ralph has written three. The first was “The Pennsylvania Elk Herd: published by The Pennsylvania Forestry Association in cooperation with the USDA Forest Service and DER Bureau of Forestry. The Second was a smaller update of the first called, “The Pennsylvania Elk Herd of Today” Published by The Pennsylvania Forestry Association in cooperation with the DCNR Bureau of Forestry. His most recent is, "The History of Pennsylvania Elk Country", also published by The Pennsylvania Forestry Association..

Mr. Harrison never had an official job in elk management. There was no big title, just a simple love and respect for the animals, which led him to go above and beyond the call of duty and dedicate his life to them. He has seen elk population grow from less than twenty to over 800 animals. Although he would never claim responsibility, he was an important factor in this increase.

First, a greatly condensed history of the Pennsylvania elk herd to illustrate the backdrop against which Ralph Harrison's life work took place. The last Pennsylvania Elk was killed sometime in the late 1860s or early 1870s as a result of unregulated market hunting. In 1913 The Pennsylvania Game Commission released fifty animals in the north central part of the state. These animals were obtained from Yellowstone National Park. There were additional releases and in time the herd grew to the point that The PGC established a hunting season in 1923. Anyone with a general hunting license could kill an elk (bulls of 4 or more points were legal). In 1931 only one bull was killed.  The season was closed in 1931 and remained so until 2001.

During this time the PGC lost interest in the herd and at times few even knew they existed, as what few remained stayed well away from human habitation in most cases. The population began to increase slowly in the 1950s. Ralph recalls how he realized the elk herd was rebounding in the mid-1970s after a late August evening encounter with cows and calves in a meadow in which he heard bulls bugling in the woodlands. This so inspired him that he approached his boss the next day and outlined a proposal to help the elk herd survive and expand. Things progressed from there. A management plan was developed which included more public land acquisition and development of suitable elk habitat.

 In a nutshell the PGC did re-introduce the elk in 1913, but when the population declined too much to support a hunt, they lost interest in the species. It was The Bureau of Forestry, inspired by Ralph Harrison that picked up the torch and brought the elk herd to the position it was in a few years ago. The PGC only entered the fray after Forestry had done the hard legwork to bring the herd back from the brink. It should be noted that this was the agency as a whole, not some of the dedicated Game Commission employees who were assigned to the area. These included District Game Protectors Norm Erickson who served from late 1940s-1965 or 66, and Harold Harsbarger who ably filled the slot from 1966-97. PGC Wildlife Biologist Bill Drake was also numbered among these dedicated individuals. All were very interested in the welfare of the elk, even at times that The PGC as a whole was not.

Originally published at Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.

PA Rut Peaks-Collaring Ends at SNP?

Mature Buck Makes Lip Curl: Canon 7D 500mm f4 ISO 400 1/800 sec. f4.5

My brother Coy of Country Captures and I returned from an abortive trip to Shenandoah National Park last week, to find the whitetail rut going strong in southcentral Pennsylvania.  As regular readers are well aware, whitetail photography in the park was destroyed for the time being by a massive research program in which most of the mature bucks in the Big Meadows area of the park were fitted with huge radio collars, and many of the deer at other high tourist use areas are collared as well.  Many that are not collared, have large ear tags in each ear.

Early this week,I spoke to fellow PGC retiree and wildlife photographer, Billie Cromwell who arrived in the park the first day (Wednesday) of our trip, but decided to stay for a few days.  Sometime later in the week he spoke extensively with a ranger near the Big Meadows campground.  According to that ranger, the radio collaring program had ended two days prior.  If this is the case it is entirely possible that we saw the collaring crew on the last day that program was in effect.

What a relief to photograph a buck without a collar: Canon 7D 500mm f4 ISO 400 1/800 sec. f4.5

The buck shown above is not a lucky SNP buck that escaped collaring, he is a Pennsylvania buck that is exposed to significant hunting pressure each year.  In our area bucks seldom live to grow as large as the better bucks that SNP can produce. As a result if one wants to consistently see or photograph bucks as large or larger than this one they need to visit a place such as SNP or Cades Cove in the Smokies.

The big question at the moment is how long the study will affect the deer of SNP.  If they do not collar more deer or replace the collars on those already processed, within a few years things should return to normal as the collars are designed to fall off in time. But all to often research programs gain a momentum and keep going and going.  Of course an even worse disaster would be the actual arrival of CWD in the park.

Is this alert doe looking for bucks, predators, or a radio collaring crew?

The picture of the alert doe is primarily posted for humor, as it is not likely that she will be radio collared in the area in which she lives. But she actually faces a far worse threat with the extreme likelihood that CWD will soon be found in our part of Pennsylvania, as it has already been found to the southwest in Maryland and to the east in Adams County, Pennsylvania.

Originally posted at Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.

PA Elk Season Report 2012

For the past two years I have observed the first several days of the Pennsylvania elk season, but due to a variety of reasons I did not go this year. Most important was a significant conflict with photographing the peak of the whitetail rut as elk season was a bit later this year and I wanted to be in Shenandoah Park for most of elk season week,.  For reasons described in the last post ,that trip did not work out and it would have been better had I gone to elk country.

Upon returning from Virginia I learned from David Anderson that two of the character bulls that were favorites with the elk watching/photography community were killed during the first few days of elk season. I partially predicted this outcome in the post of September 30, 2012,"Will The Biggest and Best Be Lost?" In that post I predicted the loss of at least one, most likely two, and perhaps all of the bulls shown. I did not include the famous bull "Attitude" in this list as in my opinion he was not as large as the three shown, plus he often spent a lot of his time in downtown Benezette once the rut was over, which gave him a better chance of surviving than most. His luck ran out this year when he was killed on Monday morning, the first day of season well away from Benezette.

"Attitude" 2012

Another favorite bull known as "Uncle Bob" was killed on Wednesday. He first gained wide attention in 2011  when he was named in honor of Bob "Uncle Bob" Woodring ,who is a close friend to many in the elk photography community.  This came about when we photographed him extensively in August of that year in Mr. Woodring's meadow. This was his first year with an impressive rack and he would likely have been killed in the hunt that year, but he broke his left main beam during the rut, which destroyed his trophy value. This ensured his survival that year, but he had a beautiful set of antlers this year and no one was likely to pass him up.

"Uncle Bob" 2012

Today well known elk enthusiast Jeff Thomas sent me what information he has on the hunt as of late this afternoon and I will share it with you below as reported by him.

"Attitude was taken Monday morning on Rock Hill road. I dont' have other details on him. Uncle Bob was taken Wednesday near Weedville. He weighed 649 lbs field dressed and green scored 365. The guide was Eric McCarthy. I heard he got away from them on Tuesday and on Wednesday they spooked him, but the hunter made a good shot and dropped him. They brought a large bull in from Mason hill on Monday and he scored 405 green, it was the 6c bull, I never saw him before. Watch the Endeavor news for Carol Mulvihill's story on him, its a real human interest story.

There were 16 bulls in by 1 o'clock on Wednesday and at least 24 cows. A lot of the big bulls were coming from the New Garden area and below Karthaus near the Kuhn farm. I heard that on Tuesday evening there were 19 bulls in one bunch. They brought 5 cows and possibly 1bull out of the gates at the bottom of Dewey.I didn't actually see the bull brought out.

I spent Sunday afternoon on Dewey and saw a cow bred by a 6x6 with a brown collar. There were elk everywhere. I saw 75 on the big hill, 45 in the first field on Dewey Road and another 35 in the second field. They took a cow in the new field in front of the limestone pile on Monday morning."  Jeff Thomas reporting from Pennsylvania Elk Country.

A special thanks to Dave Anderson and Jeff Thomas for providing us with this important information.

Originally published at Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.

Whitetail Photographers--Avoid Shenandoah National Park!

As I write this post, I originally planned to be in a motel room in Virginia, savoring the memories of a day s afield photographing  the whitetails of Shenandoah National Park and anticipating another full day and Friday morning doing likewise.  Instead I find myself  at home in Pennsylvania, sitting at the computer and pondering how easily whitetail photography at Shenandoah National Park was destroyed.

Let's face it--I knew conditions were less than ideal at the park based on information received from many sources such as Larry Brown, Billie Cromwell, Jim Fields, and Todd Mann, along with my own experience from a brief morning visit in late October.  I did not realize: however, that things were as bad as they turned out to be.

My brother Coy and I left for SNP in the early morning hours and saw not one whitetail as we drove from the Thornton Gap Entrance to Big Meadows before dawn.  Shortly after dawn we found this superb buck at the Tanner's Ridge overlook.  This did not seem all that bad as the tags could easily be removed with Photoshop, but unfortunately this proved to be the best encounter of the day.

Buck 91--One of the few that has only ear tags

Most of the does that we sighted had either ear tags or collars.  We did see one mature buck without a collar or tags, but he was shy and we did not get good photographs.  I think this buck is a bit too wild for the tagging team to dart him, but in hopes of protecting him, I will not reveal where he was sighted.  With the exception of this buck--every buck that we saw from medium size to mature rack bucks were fitted with the ridiculously large numbered collars.

Buck With Damaged Collar that is damaging the hair on the neck.

In late morning we saw a group walking toward the Visitor Center carrying equipment, with a least two of the party wearing uniforms and we realized too late to take photographs that this was most likely the deer tagging crew returning from a mornings' work in the field.  We talked to Billie Cromwell in the early afternoon and he said that every mature buck that he had seen had a collar, including a large 12 point that was collar free just two weeks ago.  We did see some yearling bucks that were not collared or tagged, but it seems likely that this is because they are concentrating on mature deer--likely in hopes of studying the movement patterns of mature bucks in particular.

Another Victim

I could perhaps understand it if a modest percentage of the bucks and does in the Big Meadows area were marked for study, but it appears that the vast majority of the animals are so marked and that the tagging crew is still at work trying to process those that have escaped so far.

We originally planned to stay for 2 1/2 days, but this was so frustrating that I called the motel where we planned to stay and cancelled our reservations--telling the owner why we were doing so.  The management was aware of the situation at the park, was very understanding, and did not penalize us for cancelling on such short notice. This was one of the few bright spots of the day.  In the future, I may visit the park on rare occasion to observe the effects of the study, but my frequent trips to SNP are over--at least until the study has run its' course.

While this is distressing for the photographer/wildlife watcher, the worst aspect of the situation is the undue stress and discomfort that this places on the deer.  The negative aspects of this study could perhaps be justified if it would significantly benefit the well-being of the deer or combat the spread of CWD, but at this point many are not convinced that it will do so.  With that being said, even if the study proved to be fully justified and extremely necessary, there seems no reason to use such a large sample size, which negatively impacts both the animals and the wildlife viewing/photography experience at Shenandoah National Park.

If you have not already done so, be sure to check out the links in previous poss to other writing on this issue by Larry W. Brown, and Todd Mann.  Also be sure to check Country Captures for Coy's take on this situation.  If his post is not up already--it should be soon.

Originally published at Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.