Stories from the hills of Leetonia

This is one of those fixer upper places in Leetonia. It was called the turtle camp for a while when the Lebos hunted snapping turtles and hung the shells out to dry on the front porch. Now the roof looks like a turtle, mossy-green and humped like an old man who has seen better days.

Chris Huff recalls the last time the cabin was used was in the late 80's. He is going to get me some more history on it for later.

The DiGuiseppe family members have been using a trailer parked to the rear of the old camp. While sitting and talking to Chris inside the trailer, I noticed two bullet holes in the stove, not typical for most places even in Leetonia; I asked Chris about the holes.

He started by saying, "That's something I am not too proud of."

I thought maybe he gets mad and shoots appliances. But this was
not the case.

Chris went on to say, "We I was about seventeen, me and some friends were up for deer camp. We were down the creek and noticed some nice deer hanging outside this camp(I am leaving the camp name out). They hadn't tagged them and we had always heard an untagged deer doesn't belong to anyone. "

Being young and impulsive, Chris and his friends decided to take the deer for their own and bring it back to camp. What they didn't think about was it had just snowed and it was easy for the other camp's hunters to track them and their deer down. Now Chris and his friends were confronted with angry hunters, the State Police and the Game Warden. The hunters were ready to file stealing charges against the boys until the Game Warden told the hunters he would make sure they couldn't hunt in Pennsylvania again since they must have been poaching by not tagging their deer. All I can say is the Game Warden must have taken pity on the youthful exploit.

Chris's problems weren't over however, his family didn't let him off the hook and they imposed a three-year exclusion from coming to camp for Chris. The next Spring when the family came to camp there were two bullet holes in the stove. I won't say the angry hunters did this...but for Chris it is a reminder of a youthful mistake that cost him in more ways than one.

Have a great Leetonia day. Mountain Girl, Paula, logging out.