Keith: I didnt realize that PA was initially mostly evergreen, thankyou for that. Ever heard of Sagertown? On Route 965 out of Polk, Pa there is a Sagertown Road which is a reference to a town that has been gone since the 1920s. My grandfather used to deliver groceries there as a very young man (he was born in 1904). Nothing left but a few foundations and is a locally favorite area now for deer hunting.
Lloyd are you perhaps thinking of Slatertown? There is a small town named Saegertown (slightly different spelling) about 25 miles NNW of Polk, over in Crawford County, but it is still alive and well.
I've hunted a number of spots around Polk and Rt. 965 over the years, and I am very familiar with Slatertown Road, which is a dirt road that comes out to Rt. 965 a little west of Polk. I'm also pretty sure there was once a small village by that name along its' route that is totally gone. The last time I was there, I had been grouse hunting off Dog Hollow Rd. near Bullion, and wanted to check a potential muzzleloading deer hunting spot near Raymilton to see if the area I'd hunted a couple years before had been posted. It was already past noon and I wanted to get in some more grouse hunting, so I took a shortcut on Slatertown Rd. through the middle of State Game Lands 39. The weather had turned to sleet and freezing rain, and I was a bit hesitant as I hit the steepest part of the hill going down into the bottoms to cross South Sandy Creek. The dirt road looked like wet glass, and I almost got stopped, then slowly slid off the side of the icy road into a shallow ditch. I had a grand old time until nearly 5:00 PM pulling my truck back onto the road with a couple come-a-longs and chains wrapped around trees. I fell on the ice several times, and at one point slid on my ass about 40-50 feet downhill when I was putting tire chains on my back tires, because obviously the studded tires were not going to be enough. Over the years, I've learned that it is always best to put on tire chains before you get stuck... not after. By the time I got to where I had a bit of traction, it was almost dark. I abandoned the idea of going all the way across over toward Rt. 965, and instead headed back toward I-80 at Barkeyville, hoping the salt trucks were out.
SGL 39 near Slatertown Rd. is also the area where my cousin was shot dead while turkey hunting when I was in college. Not a good memory there, and devastating to my uncle who was hunting with him that day.
There are remains of several of those old stone blast furnaces very near this area. Victory Furnace is a few miles northeast of the other end of Slatertown Rd. where it meets old Rt. 8. There is another in pretty bad condition at Raymilton, and another a few miles east along Bullion Run. I killed my first buck with a flintlock rifle sitting about 30 feet high up on top of Webster Furnace (built in 1838 on Bear Run) near East Sandy Creek between Van and Rockland. I didn't even know what it was when I found this big snow covered cut stone structure in the darkness at around 5:30 AM on the first day of buck season, and foolishly decided it would be a great idea to climb it, and use it as a deer stand. Back then, I'd climb about anything to get a better vantage point. Now I'm a bit more aware of my mortality. Two hours later, two bucks and several does on a mid-morning feed came into range, and I set the trigger, squeezed, and had a flash in the pan. That got their attention, but they nervously stared at me and stamped the ground while I poked my pick into the vent, re-primed, and fired again. This time I took the 8 point with a heart shot. A guy I knew had later told me my stand was an old brick making furnace. It was only about 8 or 9 years ago that I revisited it and researched what it really was used for. That whetted my interest, and led me to find more of them while also leading me to hunt in new areas. I love hunting new and unfamiliar areas, even though it is harder to be successful than patterning the game with trail cameras, etc. I never imagined that my hunting would also become a living breathing history lesson, but a lot of our past is out in them thar' woods.
