For The Record - March 2006

For The Record

By Ralph Scherder

Tim Cherok
Guernsey County, OH
145 Gross Typical

Jason Kindzia
Allegheny County, PA
140 P&Y

Tim Cherok and Jason Kindzia, both of southwestern PA, have been friends and hunting partners since childhood. “My dad introduced me to hunting,” Tim says. “When I was five or six,
I picked up his recurve bow and couldn’t stop shooting it. My dad bought me my first compound bow when I was twelve. He has since gotten out of the sport, but my desire to hunt has never died.”
“My dad also got me into hunting,” Jason says, “but it was Tim who got me interested in archery. I got my first deer with a bow when I was seventeen and I’ve been hooked ever since.”
As kids, Tim and Jason spent every possible moment in the woods. “All we did was hunt,” Tim says. “Every chance we got, we were trying to harvest whitetails.”
Their love of hunting eventually drove them toward the sporting goods business. Together they own and operate Ultimate Outdoors in Murraysville, PA, where they offer an indoor archery range, techno-hunt, and anything necessary to satisfy someone’s hunting and fishing needs. They’ll soon be celebrating their eleventh year in business, quite a feat considering that they were both only eighteen years old when they bought the store.
“So far, the sporting goods business has been good to us,” Tim says. “There have been some slow times, but we always seem to get by. It’s something we really enjoy.”

“Especially the archery part,” Jason says. “Working on bows, setting them up and fine-tuning them for customers. Our trademark has always been our pride in setting up bows that allow people to shoot as accurately as possible.”
As for their own hunting adventures, Tim and Jason have done quite well the past few years. Both have taken 120- and 130-class bucks with bow and gun in several states. In 2000, Jason broke into the 150’s with a Midwestern deer that gross-scored 152. In 2004, it was Tim’s turn.
“We decided to hunt first day of gun season in Ohio instead of here in Pennsylvania,” says Tim. “We’d archery hunted a piece of property quite a bit and saw several 2.5-year-old deer. We had a good feeling some older bucks may also be on the property.”
In the weeks leading up to the season, they studied aerial photos in search of corridors the deer would likely travel. A week before opening day, they hung their tree stands. Jason opted for a hillside on the west side of the property, while Tim chose a hillside on the east.
“My spot,” says Tim, “was right where two fields pinched together, with lots of brush and a fence line. We were feeling confident.”
Monday morning, the first shots rang out shortly after daybreak, but none of them were Tim’s or Jason’s. And then, late-morning, several does scurried past Tim’s stand. A short while later, he spotted a decent buck following the fence line to the peak of the hill, then traveling over the other side, out of sight. At noon, Tim and Jason met back at their truck for lunch.

“I told Jason my wife was sick with the flu. She was sick when we left, but didn’t want to stop me from hunting. I called her on the cell phone Monday morning and she still wasn’t feeling any better. I didn’t want to leave her home alone too long by herself, so we set 3:30pm as our quitting time. That way we’d get home a little earlier than expected.”
A little after three o’clock, with only twenty minutes left to hunt, Tim heard volleys of shots just over the hill from him. “It sounded like someone shooting as fast as they could reload,” Tim says. “Deep down, I knew it meant someone was missing something they really wanted to hit.”
Moments later, a doe emerged from the thick underbrush. Right behind her were three more does, and behind them was a shooter buck that would score in the mid-140s. “As soon as I saw the deer, I knew it was a mature whitetail,” says Tim.
The buck followed the does down the fence line and stopped fifty yards away. A single shot from Tim’s .50-caliber Knight Disc Extreme made sure the buck wasn’t going anywhere. The deer fell less than ten yards from Tim’s stand. “I’ve been chasing big bucks for over twenty years,” Tim says. “In that time, I’ve had a lot of big bucks just out of bow range. To finally get one of them, even if it’s with a gun, felt great. To finally grab the antlers of a truly mature whitetail was really satisfying. The first thing I did was call Jason on the walkie-talkie and let him know I’d scored. He was as excited I as was. That’s what hunting’s all about – sharing your greatest moments with your friends.”
In the 2005 archery season, Jason nearly matched Tim’s Ohio deer with a Pennsylvania buck of his own. “I was hunting one area off and on all year. Not a ridiculous amount, but quite a bit. As October trudged on, I wasn’t seeing many deer, which led me to believe it might be a buck area. I saw very few does. If I saw a deer, it was usually a buck.

“Toward the end of the month, a lot more sign showed up. Then, one day I saw five bucks working the hillside, making rubs and scrapes. I was literally watching them do it. They were about a hundred yards away and I didn’t have my binoculars, so I couldn’t make any of them out.
“The next rainy day we had, I went back and re-hung my tree stand closer to where I’d seen the bucks. Sure enough, first night in there, the buck I shot wandered by, only eight yards away. Any closer and I might have been uncomfortable.”
Sometimes it’s that simple – at least, it seems that way at first. Only in retrospect does it click as to why the area was a hot spot.
“The area was a creek bottom,” Jason says, “and there were several oak trees just starting to drop their acorns. I think that kept the bucks nearby because the rut hadn’t really kicked-in yet.”

Talking to Tim and Jason, one is quickly aware that these guys love to hunt, and they especially love to hunt whitetails. Just entering their sporting goods store produces the same results. Half of the store’s walls are covered with mounts of bucks scoring from the low-120s to the high 180s. Every buck has a story behind it, and all of the bucks were taken from various places around the country by either themselves or their friends.
“I think the best moments in hunting are the ones you share with your friends,” Tim says. “Even though hunting isn’t necessarily a team sport, it’s nice to be able to share your enthusiasm with those who matter most to you. That’s one reason why we love having all these beautiful bucks on display.”

Richard Blauser
176 3/8 Boone & Crockett
Butler County, PA

Richard Blauser is no stranger to big bucks. In fact, he’s killed eight bucks that score above 120”, including a massive Boone & Crockett buck taken in 2000 in Butler County.
But let’s start at the beginning.
“My father and uncles taught me to hunt,” Blauser said. “I went out with them when I was nine or ten. They carried rifles and I had my b.b. gun.” When he turned twelve and his chance to hunt finally came, he harvested his first buck, a two point. “It was a unique deer,” Blauser said. “The one side was broken off and the other grew down around its face, and on the end of the beam was a little Y.”
The first big buck he killed was in the early-1980s. “I knew it was in the area, and I was hoping to see it first day of deer season, but I didn’t. So, on the second day of the season we hunted all day, my cousin Paul and I, and we were watching a thicket near an old strip mine. Several people had walked through there that day. It was a cold, rainy evening, and about four hundred yards away; the deer came out of the thicket.
“After shooting that big one, it was altogether a different feeling. A friend of mine, a gunsmith, hunted big bucks exclusively. Listening to his stories and seeing some of the ones he had shot made me think ‘this is for me, this is what I want to do.’ If I shot just any buck, I could end my deer season in just one or two days of hunting in archery season. Killing that first big buck changed all that. I started passing up smaller ones to find one bigger than what I’d already taken. Many people won’t believe me, but I’ve passed on as high as twenty-five bucks a year to have a chance at a record book deer.”

So what do you look for when trying to find big bucks? Do you look for rubs, scrapes? The answer is sometimes surprising.
“I use my ears,” Blauser said. “I listen to people talk and I don’t say much. But you can’t always go by the stories you hear. A big buck to one person may be only mediocre to another. But when someone starts talking and they’re eyes turn glassy, their mouth hangs open, and they start shaking – they’ve got my attention!”
In November 2000, a week before bear season, Richard’s cousin told him of a big buck he’d seen on their property in Butler County. “A week later,” Blauser said, “a friend told me they’d seen a tremendous buck in the same place as my cousin had. I knew the area well, so the first Tuesday of rifle season, Paul walked an old road that cut up the hillside while I followed the creek bottom. Sure enough, I kicked up the buck and it went a way we hadn’t expected.”
Blauser hunted for the buck all that week with no success. On Saturday morning, he returned to the spot and sat in a place where he could clearly see the creek bottom. He’d just settled in when he heard something walking quickly up the creek, out of sight. Once again, he’d spooked the buck.
Now knowing he had found the deer’s hiding place, Blauser decided to stay there, hoping the deer would come back that evening. A few shots rang out in the distance. A short while later, Blauser heard a few more shots, closer this time.

“Then I saw someone walking up the creek bottom,” Blauser said. “I went down to see who it was and saw that he was carrying a pistol. We started talking and we heard more shooting, even closer. We were standing side by side looking in the direction of the shots, and this guy all of a sudden drew his pistol and aimed it up into the woods. Shots came from around the hillside from this guy’s friend, but I couldn’t see anything because he was blocking my view. So I looked over his shoulder and all I saw was horns running through the woods.”
The other hunter shot twice and missed while the deer ran directly toward them. Finally the deer turned and Blauser had a broadside shot through saplings. “I picked out a hole and shot. The deer dropped right there.
“Later on, we talked to ten people who missed that buck that morning, and every one of them had some kind of excuse! When you get an opportunity at a big buck, you have to make it count.”
When asked why he thought the buck chose that area, Blauser replied, “The area was thick and down in where no one usually ventured. A little out of the way place no one got into, slashings with a creek bottom and little crab apple trees surrounding it. It wasn’t a very big area, so nobody thought a big buck would be there.”

Officially the buck scored 176 3/8 inches, Boone & Crockett.By Dave Freeman

Marlon Hale
Irondale, OH
Boone and Crockett
Score 247 1/8

Marlon told me he was riding around in September with his girlfriend when they spotted a 6x6 mainframe. After getting written permission to hunt the area, he started hunting the area opening day and hunted
through the time he harvested his trophy. He usually hunted the evenings and one particular day he spotted a buck going into the cornfield 100 yards away. He told us that he couldn’t tell how big but felt it could be the 6 x 6 he had seen during the summer.
The morning of November 4th Marlon went out in the woods and did everything he usually did sprayed scent killer, put out Tinks bomb. He
then spent the morning grunting and using the can.

Marlon said that at 10:00 am he was sitting at the end of a logging
road and a doe came through. She was running pretty fast and stopped on
the other side of the road. She was breathing heavily and looking over her shoulder. At first he thought a coyote or a large dog was chasing her, but about 4-5 seconds later he heard 5-6 series of buck grunts. Marlon kept looking over to his right. He was sitting on the ground leaning against a big tree. It sounded like the noise was coming off to his right. Finally, when he turned left the buck came up the
logging road and was standing there about 20-25 yards and looking
towards the doe.

At that point Marlon picked up his crossbow where it was leaning
between his legs. Marlon told us he was shaking really bad. He then took the shot. The buck was quartering away which made him think that he had taken a bad shot. The shot taken at around 10:15 to 10:30 am was however a good shot and Marlon found his buck only 100 yards away,
This was Marlon’s third Big buck deer since 2002. In 2003, he shot a 13 point which grossed at 193 and netted 175. In 2002, a 14 point which
scored gross of 155 and net 151. Marlon told us that he tries to stay close at home, but sometimes he has to expand his hunting somewhere else. His first deer was shot in Jefferson County, the second in Harrison county, and this year’s buck was taken in Carroll county.
Marlon’s number one tip is to head to where the corn is. You are sure
to find bigger horned deer there. Another tip is to cover the three S’s – scent, sight, and sound. Your busted if you don’t follow those rules. Make sure your scent is covered so he can’t smell you. Stay far from sight so he can’t spot you and listen to all sounds to know where he may be coming from.