PA. TEEN’S FIRST DEER IS A BUCK OF LIFETIME WITH HER GRANDFATHER
It's been said that hunters will always remember their first deer. It's safe to say a Pennsylvania 13-year-old and her family will never forget her first deer, a mostly white-haired buck aptly named “The Ghost.”
Alex Eckenrod of Hegins, Schuylkill County, was hunting in southern York County on Dec. 9, the final day of Pennsylvania's rifle season, with her grandfather Andrew Orwig, of Lititz, Lancaster County, when she shot a buck of a lifetime.
“It was very exciting, I was really happy and very surprised,” she said about the piebald, a 9-point with a 17-inch spread.
Orwig said the hunters in the area have been pursuing the elusive deer and gave it the nickname “The Ghost” because of its white coloration. It only has brown on the back of its ears and near the base of its antlers. It's an uncommon genetic anomaly known as piebald, different from an albino, which is purely white.
“In our area, people were hunting this deer specifically,” Orwig said. The day before their hunt, Orwig said he knows hunters shot at and missed, the deer.
Their hunt almost didn't happen. Alex was to hunt with another family member that day, but he was unable to go. Orwig said he would be willing to take her along. His wife picked up Alex on that Friday. “She basically showed up with just her hunting license,” he recalled. He went through his hunting gear and clothes to outfit her with clothing to stay warm during their hunt.
He let her choose from his selection of guns. Instead of picking a common rifle like a .243, .308 or .30-30, she wanted to use his 12-gauge shotgun that has a rifled slug barrel. “I told her, 'Here's the deal. That's got a little bit of a bunch (recoil), but in the same aspect if you shoot a deer with that, it's going to put it down.' ”
Alex said she chose the shotgun because of the way it felt when she held and raised the gun. “It just felt comfortable,” she said.
The next morning they got up early for the hourlong drive to the farm. As they pulled on to the property, Orwig was concerned about fog that had rolled in overnight. “You couldn't see anything,” he remembered. They sat in the truck to wait for daylight to make a decision about venturing into the woods. As the sun started to come up, he realized they could see a little bit and told her, “We're not going to get a deer sitting in the truck. Let's get ready and work our way through.”
As the duo walked along a grown-up pasture field, Orwig recalled, “I happened to look off to the left toward the creek and I see this white form in the mist. I had to stop and I was like, is that really what I think it is?” When he raised his binoculars, the deer turned its head and he realized, “Holy cow, it's The Ghost.”
The deer stood behind a tree about 50 yards away. He spoke to his granddaughter about the shot opportunity, but she didn't have a clear view through her scope. The deer lay down and Alex took a few steps to get a better vantage point. When the deer stood, she took the shot and the deer dropped in its tracks.
“I didn't know I actually hit it, I thought I missed," Alex said. "I looked at Grandpa and we started walking to it and I got really excited.”
It's the first piebald Alex has ever seen. “I didn't know they even existed,” she said. She thanked her grandfather for his expertise. “If he didn't point it out, I would have walked right past it.”
Jeannine Fleegle, wildlife biologist for the Pennsylvania Game Commission's deer and elk section, explained the piebald condition is an inherited genetic trait. It causes blotches of non-pigmented areas that vary in size and distribution. The result is a wide range of patterns.
Some deer have speckles or whitewashed flanks or the markings of a prize pinto. Others are almost completely white. But if they have the brown eyes and black hooves of the classic whitetailed deer, they are still piebald, not albino.
She said the genetic mutation affects less than 1% of the population, but there may be more than that out there.
The proud grandfather told Alex, “You might shoot a bigger deer in your lifetime, but you will never shoot a better deer in your lifetime. As a grandfather, being there watching that unfold and seeing that experience and being able to share that with her, that's a memory of a lifetime. You can't express the joy, the pride, the happiness,” he said.
Soon the hunters met with the farm owner to show him the deer. Other hunters on the property also joined in the celebration. “They knew everyone was hunting for the deer. People have tried to shoot that deer. And the fact that this 13year-old young lady, she's new to hunting, and everyone just embraced her into this and that she came out with this buck of a lifetime,” Orwig said.
Within 24 hours, Orwig said he was receiving emails and corresponding with other people living in the area who had watched the deer over the past two years. When it was a fawn, it had a sibling that was colored like a normal deer. People have sent him photos of when “The Ghost” had its first rack with 6 points last year.
Alex's grandmother, Meghan McMahon, said Alex didn't realize how unusual the buck was until they got to the butcher shop. “Every person who was dropping their deer off to be butchered was asking if they could take a picture of it and if she shot that,” she said. “She jumped up on the truck and held it,” she said saying “that's my deer.”
They are getting a shoulder pedestal mount of the deer.
Orwig said the beautiful buck needs to be shared. He's open to having Alex have her mounted deer on display at sports shows.
Orwig said the taxidermist felt like they were handing him the “holy grail” of deer hides. While the taxidermist usually sends the deer hides out to be tanned, he plans to tan this one in-house to reduce the chance of it getting misplaced.
Asked if she had anything else she wanted to say about her experience, Alex said “Thank you grandpa, and thank you to all the people, like the farmer, who lets us hunt there and the other people that were there.”
Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him at bwhipkey@gannett.com and sign up for our weekly Go Outdoors PA newsletter email on this website's homepage under your login name. Follow him on Facebook @whipkeyoutdoors , and Instagram at whipkeyoutdoors.