Well I've been home for 5 days and got things back on track after being gone for almost two weeks. Len asked for a report when I returned from Harrisburg so I will offer some observations as this was my first time there.
For those of you that can attend this show you are very fortuante as I have never been to a show that offered not only the sheer number of outfitters but the variety of trips and prices. If you are in the market for some type of hunt, it is probably worth investing in the travel expense to attend this show for a couple of days. The odds are very high you will be able to find something in your budget. The glamour of SCI isn't here but the quality is.
Whitetail hunts are very big in this neck of the woods so there were plenty of them offered. Something I've noticed more and more paricularly with whitetail deer is high volume, low priced hunts. I'm not sure how big Pike County is but every outfitter there must have been in Harrrisburg. Attending a show and talking to the outfitter is a good way to sort through what they are really offering as there are some good deals to be had but I heard some horror stories as well. People really buy into the regional thing when it comes to deer so you can get a good price on a hunt in many states other than Iowa, Kansas, Illinois, etc. Nebraska isn't known for 200+ inch deer and I'll put my hunts against any other for overall quality animals but I noticed this didn't matter. You had to hunt the known states if you ever want a big one.
My buffalo mount was a big hit and it's always fun visiting the eastern and southeastern US and talking buffalo. When you are around them all the time you forget how neat they really are and the nostalgia that is associated with them. I am hunting them now on an 85,000 acre ranch and that is hard for people in the populated areas of our country to comprend as far as size goes.
Robert Hart had a booth and he was the only rifle builder I saw but you can miss things at this show. He had some really cool rifles but I didn't talk to him because his booth was small and there were always people in it. When you consider how many vendors there were, you would think there would have been more than one rifle guy.
Overall I had a great time and even though this show is long, the time went by fairly quickly. I had people stoping all the time so there was very little down time. Even though Pennsylvania has a lot of hunters and overall pretty mediocre deer quality, there is still a lot of tradition and opportunities for hunters. This tradition is getting hard to find but it seemed to be in pretty good shape at this show and is something I enjoyed seeing.
