Pa. hunter who wondered if he saw Sasquatch ends up getting unique hunting grand slam
A Pennsylvania hunter has become the first person to complete a Pa. Grand Slam all in Beaver County.
Hunters in the Keystone State call it a grand slam when they get a black bear, white-tailed buck, fall turkey and a spring gobbler all in the same license year. While it occasionally happens elsewhere in the state, Tim Petrie got all four animals in Beaver County, where there are few bears.
According to the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s harvest data, only one bear was shot in Beaver County last fall and only two other bears have been legally harvested there.
Travis Lau, communications director, for the agency, said the other two bears were shot in 2015 and 2018. Those two hunters didn’t get bucks or turkeys in that license year, making Petrie the first person to get all four animals in Beaver County.
Petrie, 33, born and raised in Monaca, is still trying to absorb the accomplishment after getting his spring gobbler on May 7.
“It’s just a dream that I’m still trying to comprehend,” he said about completing his grand slam.
‘It’s something that you always hear and think it would be so nice. Now that it happened, I’m looking back thinking 'Did that just happen?' I’m still beside myself,” Petri said.
State Game Warden Randy Bogolea, 83, of New Sewickley Township, has lived in Beaver County all of his life and has worked more than 23 years with the Game Commission as a deputy game protector.
“To get it anywhere in the state, it’s a feat. But to shoot two turkeys, a bear and a buck in Beaver County is like 98-to-1 against,” Bogolea said. “He’s a real hunter.”
Bogolea, who still helps the wildlife agency with some reports, knows what a challenge it is to get all of those animals in one year. “When I was growing up there were no bears in Beaver County,” he said
“I was more proud than he was and more excited because it’s a real honor to get the triple trophy and grand slam in Beaver County. I tried and tried and tried and couldn’t get it in the state,” Bogolea said.
The triple trophy is similar to the grand slam but is minus one turkey.
“To do what Tim did, you have a better chance of hitting the Powerball than getting a grand slam and triple trophy in Beaver County,” Bogolea said. He’s been a hunter-trapper education provider for 65 years and has been friends with Petrie since he took Bogolea’s class 21 years ago.
“He’s a heck of a duck hunter and a caller. He’s good on calling turkeys and he’s a real woodsman. He was born just 100 years too late,” Bogolea said about Petrie’s hunting prowess.
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Bear looked like Sasquatch
Petrie used a compound bow to shoot his bear Oct. 7 while deer hunting during the state’s early archery season in Wildlife Management Unit 2B. The special early season includes the metropolitan areas of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and his bruin was one of only five bears harvested in the 2023 season. The total bear harvest for all of the 2023 hunting seasons was 2,920 bears across the state.
“I was out deer hunting in Economy. It was funny, I was working all day and I asked my wife (Afton), ‘Do you mind if I catch the last couple of hours out in the stand?’ It’s about 840 yards from my house, my stand, and she said ‘Go on out there and get your deer.’”
He was told there were bears in the area, but never captured one on his trail cameras. That evening he didn’t expect to see much, so he pulled the memory card out of a nearby camera to review the images while he was sitting in his stand.
“I was checking out the pictures to see when the bucks were coming around, and I put the phone down, yawned and looked up and I thought I saw Sasquatch run past. That’s where my mind was: 'What did I just see?' ” he said.
Then the large creature came running toward him and stopped about 15 yards away, near his trail camera, which was without its memory card. “It had no idea I was there. No one is going to believe me. It’s going to run before I shoot and if I shoot I’m going to miss,” he recalls thinking. “I was quivering. I grabbed my bow and pulled back, took a deep breath and then ‘whack.'
“The bear let out a roar and I could feel it in my chest and the bear went barreling down over the hill like somebody pushed a boulder. It was crashing through every tree,” he explained.
He immediately called his wife to let her know what happened. “She said ‘Did you shoot your buck?’ And I go ’No, I just shot a friggin' bear!’” She asked if it was dead and Petrie said he didn’t know as he didn’t want to get out of his stand. With the help of his friends and dad, who didn’t initially believe him, he recovered the bear the next morning.
He'd only purchased his bear license a few days earlier because he remembers his brother having a bear climb the tree he was sitting in a few years ago. “He didn’t have a bear tag. He would have been the third guy in Beaver County to get a bear,” Petrie said.
“I got one just in case,” he said about the bear tag.
The black bear had an estimated live weight of 161 pounds.
“It’s just very rare to get one in Beaver County,“ he said. It’s the first bear he’s ever shot and he was considering a trip to Ontario, Canada, to hunt for one. He’s getting a three-quarter bear mount made with his bruin.
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Fall turkey
On Nov. 9 he went turkey hunting and was able to get a jake with his shotgun on his friend’s property where turkeys were known to spend time in one of the fields. “As soon as I saw its fan and coloration on its wings, I said I was taking the shot,” he said.
Archery buck
On Nov. 11, he went back to his tree stand where he had shot the bear and waited that afternoon with his bow. A nice buck came down the trail and he took the shot. “I thought I had missed him,” he said. He later called Bogolea to talk about what happened and Bogloea said he believed he did hit that deer.
The next morning Petrie went out to check the spot and discovered he did hit it. With the help of his dog “Chief,” Petrie found his buck about 25 minutes later. The 8-point buck scored about 134 6/8 inches. “The one tine was a little over 11 inches long,” he said. He made a European skull mount with the buck.
Spring gobbler
Petrie's wife gave birth May 2, and spring gobbler season opened two days later. “I thought I wasn’t going to get out all,” he remembered. However they made arrangements for him to be able to hunt, “My wife is great,” he said about her wanting him to complete his quest. On May 7, he hunted on another friend’s property where he was seeing turkeys. They heard gobbling and set up near a gas line. “It was a hunt that I’ll always remember,” he said about trying to set up on the turkeys that were closer than he thought, and eventually getting one. The mature bird had a 10½-inch beard and 1⅛-inch-long spurs. “It was a nice tom,” he said.
He’s having fan tail mounts made with the fall and spring turkeys.
Divine blessings
Petrie credits his Lord and Savior for his good fortune. In August while walking with his dog he asked to be blessed and was thinking financially. “And then I found out that I had a baby and then I got the bear, and then the fall turkey and the buck, and now this. I’m looking back on everything going ‘Wow, I’m truly blessed.’ I know that I couldn’t have received that without a lot of prayer and obedience and determination and all gifts, I wouldn’t have gotten everything without God.”
“I thoroughly enjoy being in his creation. He has made and shaped things and I get to see things that nobody else sees and now I get to say that I do things that nobody else does and it’s all thanks to him and I give him all the glory,” he said.
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.
This article originally appeared on The Daily American: What is a hunting grand slam in Pennsylvania?
