Brush Creek Recreational Area

In the Public Domain - Brush Creek Wildlife Management Area

`by Rob Hilliard

Why do you hunt?

It’s the simplest, most straightforward question that can be asked of a hunter, and yet if you hear this question, it’s virtually guaranteed to come from a non-hunter. It’s the one question that we almost never ask each other. Perhaps that’s because we know that there are as many answers as there are hunters -- like snowflakes, no two can be the same.

Maybe we assume that the opposite is true, that we all hunt for similar reasons: the challenge, the thrill, the tradition, to experience nature from within. Or possibly we recognize that our desire to hunt falls into the category of things that just can’t be quantified and verbalized, like why your favorite color is blue instead of green or why you always stop at McDonalds instead of the Burger King next door.

Thoughts such as these were crawling through my mind on a recent Sunday morning as I packed the truck for an early season squirrel hunt at the 4,131-acre Brush Creek Wildlife Management Area just west of Irondale, Ohio. I pondered my hunting past because my hunting future -- my six- and nine-year-old daughters -- would be coming along for the trip today. Would they grow up to be hunters? And if so, what could I do now to guide them along?

Although not old enough to hunt by themselves yet, the girls have been out with me a time or two before. On each of those trips, I had been extra careful to make sure it was an enjoyable hike with comfortable seating. Today, though, I would be easing them a bit more into a real hunting experience, thorns and all. It would be a little tougher test than what we’d had in the past.

Although the weather was pleasant and clear by the time we arrived, Brush Creek turned into more of a test than I’d bargained for, especially for my younger daughter.

As Tom Henry, assistant area manager for Ohio Department of Natural Resources, noted when I spoke to him later, “It takes someone who’s in good physical shape” to hunt at Brush Creek WMA, more so if your legs are less than two feet long.

Tucked into a hidden corner of the flatter farm country around it, the steep, rocky outcrops and wooded ridges of the Brush Creek valley seem to be transplanted from West Virginia. Most of the WMA, over 80 percent of it in fact, is in forest cover and much of that is in the early successional stage that grouse, deer, and turkeys inhabit with regularity. According to Henry, habitat management activities at the site are geared entirely toward these woodland species. In other words, don’t bother looking for stocked pheasants here.

The habitat management efforts were proven out shortly after the girls and I entered the woods. After parking near the channel of Brush Creek itself, we had followed a feeder stream uphill less than 200 yards when an invisible grouse flushed just a few feet ahead of us. Although they barely heard the noise over the grunts and groans of straining up the trail, I stopped the girls to tell them about it just before a second bird went up, then a third. With eyes the size of clay pigeons, they glanced from me to the branches swaying from the departed birds, shocked at how close we had been to the first wildlife of the day.

A few feet further led us to the bank of a shallow pond, complete with a few small bass finning in the shallows, and its own beaver lodge. I took a few minutes to show the girls the trails the beavers made while dragging down logs to the water and to point out the chewed stumps around the pond’s edge. We skirted that edge as we moved to the upstream side of the pond, but when we reached its head, I stared into the harsh reality of Brush Creek: nearly vertical hillsides all around, covered with brush thicker than a hermit’s beard.

The brush isn’t there by accident. Several hundred acres at Brush Creek WMA have been acquired since 1990 through land acquisition/timber harvest trades. According to Henry, DNR has swapped logging rights at the site to a local timber company in return for acreage added to the WMA. This has the dual benefit of creating more hunting area and better habitat at the same time.

Other areas of the site are reclaimed strip mines, over 500 acres of which were acquired with the help of the National Wild Turkey Federation. A few of these are now in grass, but they are being planted with shrubs and young mast-producing trees. In fact, for now Henry notes, “We’ve planted about all [the open areas] that we can plant.”

Other habitat management at the site includes share cropping (mostly corn) along the bottom of the Brush Creek Valley.

It took nearly half an hour to claw our way up out of that valley and find a perch near the top of the ridge. It looked like a squirrelly spot, surrounded by mature red oaks and hickories with a few grape tangles tossed in for good measure. Armed with my shotgun and the toy rifles that each of them insisted on bringing, we settled in to wait.

Well, maybe ‘settle’ is a bit too strong of a word. There are ant farms that see less activity than we generated there on that hillside. Somewhere between the water bottle slurping, the cheese curl munching, the shoe cleaning, and the toy gun falling and clattering down the slope, it seemed any squirrels that might have been in the neighborhood finally got the hint and cleared out. We heard a few barking in the distance and even saw a couple of chipmunks zipping by, but the squirrels had gone somewhere quieter, like maybe the nearest airport.

One upside of this was that we weren’t bothering anyone else; we didn’t see another hunter. Henry mentioned this also, saying that, with the exception of “considerable” traffic on the first couple days of gun season for deer, hunting pressure at Brush Creek is fairly light. He said that the WMA is getting “more and more popular” during the first week of spring turkey season, but that it’s still “kind of a sleeper for grouse.” Henry feels that the difficult access from steep topography keeps some hunters away.

One unusual step the DNR has taken to address this difficulty at Brush Creek is to create a handicapped hunter access. Located along Township Route 62, this access road allows disabled hunters to drive back to a special parking area on a relatively flat ridge top. From there, says Henry, they can “have greater access to woodland areas” of the Brush Creek WMA that would otherwise be beyond their reach.

The tough terrain was definitely a challenge for the three of us, as my daughters and I picked our way back to the parking area. We ended up taking a steeper, but less cluttered path back down the hillside, pausing to listen to the occasional pileated woodpecker or catch a glimpse of a chipmunk. As we neared the truck, we passed a patch of alder along the creek and I explained to them that this was the preferred habitat of woodcock, which are becoming more rare in our area. Henry confirmed later that “along the creek bottoms, we do have some woodcock coming through.”

By the time we got on the road, the strain of the hike and the warmth of the afternoon began to take its toll on the kids’ attitude. Some of the grumbling was quieted when the air conditioning finally kicked in, but it was going to take food to stop it completely.

I passed by the few choices in nearby Salineville, not wanting to have them tell Mom they ate at a bar. But I knew I didn’t have the will to tolerate the griping until we reached the fast food stores in Wellsville, East Liverpool, or Calcutta. So it was off for a nutritious lunch of chips, candy bars, and pop at the Highlandtown Store along Route 39. Although I’d stopped here before when hunting at Brush Creek’s sister WMA, Highlandtown, the kids noticed the mounted deer heads and yellowing photos of trophy bucks on the wall that I had somehow missed before.

As silence descended on the backseat and we rolled toward home, I mulled whether this had been the right move at the right time. If we hunt for the enjoyment, can one tough outing drive a youngster away from it? I hoped not.

Would I be heading back to Brush Creek? Probably. When Henry told me that the deer hunting was “excellent” in the bow and muzzleloader seasons and that “Brush Creek would be one of the top spots on my list” for grouse, he was playing my tune. Those are the seasons that I wait for each year.

But would I be bringing my daughters back too? Well, that was up to them. The oldest seemed unfazed, choking down a candy bar in time to ask, “Dad, can I go muzzleloader hunting with you next?” The younger one, though, was ambivalent about her return to the field. It looks like I may have to step back a little and give her some more time.

As I pulled into the driveway at home, I was still pondering why I hunt and whether my kids would grow to love it as I do, to want to breathe in every moment afield and hold it there inside forever. But then my wife greeted me at the door with a harried look on her face and said, “You better go in and talk to your son right now. He’s been crying since you left.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked, wondering what could keep the three-year-old crying for four hours straight.

“He wanted to go hunting!” came the reply as she turned back into the house.

I tried not to let her see the smile on my face as I followed her in the door.