Mike Galup has been hunting with his grandfather since he was a child, and this year was no exception.
Galup, 29, of West Deer, and Matt Ciocca, 85, were up at 5 a.m. Saturday – the first day of rifle season – and in the woods an hour later to secure a prime spot on Ciocca’s 10-acre property Secure Crawford County.
“I have fond memories of being with my grandfather,” Galup said. “It’s a Pennsylvania tradition.”
They climbed into their respective tree stands and waited.
By 9 a.m. Galup had gotten his first deer – an 8-point buck. At 11:30 he also had a deer.
His grandfather got nothing.
“I actually felt bad,” he said.
The two finished around 1:30 p.m. and at 4 p.m. Galup dropped off his kill at Wright’s Deer Cutting in Clinton Township.
He paid $200 to have both deer processed. Galup gets smoked food – dried meat, spicy sticks, venison ham, as well as minced meat, steaks, loins and chops.
He said he would also share it with his friends from work.
“That’s a lot of meat,” he said.
Dave Wright, who runs Wright’s Deer Cutting, said he felt Saturday was slower than normal. By late afternoon, he had brought in about 40 deer for processing – down from an average of 60 or 75 the first day.
He skinned the deer to be processed Saturday and said he would begin slaughtering them Monday evening.
The copies dropped off Saturday should be ready by Wednesday, said Wright, who has run his business for 25 years.
He also makes deer bologna, kielbasa and hot dogs.
“We’ll do anything,” Wright said.
The basic cut costs $125 for all sizes.
“I’m screwed if it’s big and the customer is screwed if it’s small,” he said.
Barbara Rosensteel, who works with her son and husband at Rosensteel’s Deer Processing in Belle Vernon, said they were crowded Saturday.
“It’s crazy,” she said.
They try to cut about 20 a day, and each one lasts about 30 minutes. During rifle season, they work up to 17 hours a day, Rosensteel said.
They charge $90 per deer and have been in operation since 1999.
Neither Wright nor Rosensteel like changes made by the state game commission in recent years that allow hunters to shoot bucks and deer at the same time and extend hunting to the Saturday and Sunday after Thanksgiving.
“You get flooded,” Wright said.
“We had to turn them away,” Rosensteel said. “They’re overburdening the butchers.”
Last year they had to turn people away.
Wright said 800 to 1,000 deer are processed during archery season.
George Karmon, who runs George’s Wild Game Processing And Deer Taxidermy in Elizabeth, also said his business was slow Saturday. By late afternoon it had only reached 30, when normally it would be around 50 to 60.
“I think the weather is holding people back,” he said.
Karmon was also scheduled to go hunting on Saturday morning. He woke up, checked the weather and found it was 20 degrees.
“I turned over in bed again,” Karmon said. “I think that happened to a lot of people this morning.”
Its snack sticks – with or without cheese – are very popular, as are bologna, kielbasa and bulk and link sausage.
Karmon, who has been processing deer since he was 16, charges $125 per deer, regardless of size. He can usually process about three to four per hour.
The state game commission estimates that a deer contains about 60% waste. A 200-pounder would yield about 88 pounds of meat, Karmon said.
Most of the deer he has seen so far this year have been small to medium sized.
“Usually during archery season you get the larger specimens,” Karmon said.
According to the Pennsylvania Game Commission, just over 430,000 white-tailed deer were harvested across all hunting seasons in 2023-2024.
Game Commission Lt. Andy Harvey said he spent Saturday in Somerset and Westmoreland counties and saw more hunters than he expected.
“We saw a lot of stopped vehicles and some successful hunters,” he said.
Paula Reed Ward is a TribLive reporter covering federal and Allegheny County courts. She joined the Trib in 2020 after spending nearly 17 years at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where she was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team. She is the author of Death by Cyanide. She can be reached at pward@triblive.com.
