New York Hunter Makes Most of Food Plots at age 73

By Matthew Ward

         At 73, Ralph Scalzo Sr. has been hunting the same property for years.

His hunting land is an old hilltop dairy farm, with thin, rocky soil, in the Susquehanna highlands of central New York. Through the years, a few nice typical 8- and 10-pointers in the 18-inch-wide range have been taken there, but they were nothing like what would appear in Scalzo’s cross-hairs the morning of Nov. 21, 2006.

         The Scalzos have owned the property since 1987. It’s about 100 acres, half of which is hardwoods and the rest brush and pines. After commuting between their residence and hunting land for eight years, the Scalzos made the property home in 1995. That let them spend more time working and developing the land for deer.

During the past two years, they have made many improvements, such as planting trees and food plots. Along with hundreds of white cedars, the Scalzos have planted The Whitetail Institute of North America’s Imperial No-Plow with only ATVs and weed whackers.

         “We killed the vegetation with Roundup, added lime and fertilizer, dragged the area with the ATV and an old piece of chain link fence and spread the seed,” Scalzo said. “The rest was like magic. The plot grew and the deer came.”

         Scalzo’s favorite stand is a shooting tower at the end of a 10-acre swamp overlooking a No-plow plot. In December 2005, during the coldest day of the hunting season, Scalzo filled his freezer with a fat spike buck coming for an afternoon meal.

The first week of New York’s 2006 regular firearms season found Scalzo diligently at his post. A little after 8 a.m., two does ran out of the swamp and through a field to the woods on to his right. A few seconds later, a deer trotted toward Scalzo. At first, he thought it was a decent buck. The deer allowed him just enough time for one shot as it followed the doe. Scalzo took a quick but confident aim and fired. The buck gave no indication it was hit, but Scalzo thought the shot had been true.

         Scalzo radioed his son, who was posted at the far end of the swamp overlooking a scrapeline and a couple of freshly rubbed pine trees. A search yielded no blood, but the younger Scalzo found the nontypical 11-pointer wedged between two boulders in a hedgerow about 100 yards from the shot. When he grabbed the antlers to move the deer, they were covered in pine pitch.

         “My first thought was, is this the ‘decent’ buck he shot at?’” Scalzo’s son said. “I felt the deer to make sure it was still warm.”

         The buck had a 22-1/2-inch inside spread with a double brow tine on the right and triple on the left. Its estimated age was 5-1/2 years.

         Word of the monster spread quickly through the rural community, and many lifelong hunters came to see it. They said they had never seen antlers like that in central New York.

         In 2007, Scalzo plans to acquire a 5-acre meadow next to his property. On the parcel, he plans to plant a 2-1/2-acre plot of the Whitetail Institute’s Imperial Extreme and experiment with a couple plots of Secret Spot too.