Miles for Piles

The traditional shed hunting phrase, “miles for piles” generally refers to the amount of walking needed to lay eyes on, and accumulate, piles of antlers. However, this past weekend we gave the phrase a whole new meaning.

Brandon and I had planned a weekend full of shed hunting and skeet shooting. We were headed to camp by way of St. Mary’s, PA to pick up a new 20 gauge CZ Bobwhite G2 side by side shotgun I had reserved. We hit the road Friday around 3 PM with ample time to get to St. Marys before closing time at 6 PM.

Immediately upon arrival at the gun shop, I had my hands on the gun and application paperwork filled out. To my dismay, my application went to “pending” with a 3 hour estimated wait time. I was going to have to come back.

We made the 1.5 hour drive to camp and began to re-plan our Saturday activities. There was a dusting of snow on the ground and Saturday’s forecast was for 50 degrees and sun. It was decided to go back to St. Mary’s first thing, purchase the gun, and arrive back to camp to shed hunt around lunch time after the snow had melted.

Luckily, all went according to plan and after 3 more hours of driving I was back at camp, gun in hand, at 10:45 AM. We shot a bit of skeet in the field, packed our bags and lunches, and headed for the big woods.

We made our way down to the meadow and over the bridge before heading up onto the First Finger. We worked our way around Coon Point, up through the saddle of Coon near the Wood Fort, and back into the Jeep Trail Valley. After checking my trail camera briefly, we headed up and over the Little Saddle to the Big Saddle to check a camera Robert had out as well.

We dropped behind the Second Finger and made our way out to the point. About 4.5 miles into our hike as we were two thirds of the way to the point of the Second Finger, I looked up the ridge 20 yards and finally saw white tines-up. “Got one!” I emphatically yelled. Brandon walked down and we admired the bright 4 point left side.

We briefly scanned the area for the match but decided to continue our hike. If we were going to make it back to camp with enough time to shoot a few boxes of shells, we had better get a move on. We got to the end of the Second Finger before hopping back up on top and making our way out.

We put an even 7 miles on the boots Saturday, and shot our fair share of clays to boot. Not bad for driving miles for, well, definitely not piles. But hey, one nice shed is a great bonus to a day in the ANF.