A Fine Act of Sportsmanship

By Jim Baney

I would like share an experience that happened to me during this year's spring gobbler season.

We have a cabin near Gaines in Tioga County. One morning during the end of the first week of the season while in somewhat of a hurry at 4:15 a.m., I was loading our station wagon when I realized I forgot my decoy bag. At the time I had my GPS in my hand and placed it on the top of the car on the roof rack, making a mental note of getting it when I came back from the house with my decoy bag.

As you can guess, I drove off without thinking about it until I parked my car 30 minutes later where I planned to hunt. Getting out of the car, I looked on the roof, hoping against hope that it might have stuck somewhere on the roof rack, but to no avail. It was gone.

After my hunt I back-tracked the entire route to look for it along the road, but no luck.. I headed back home to York County on May 6 minus one GPS.

Now, as Paul Harvey says, for "the rest of the story."

Late in the afternoon on May 9, a fellow in his early 40s came to the door and asked if he could ask me a few questions. Thinking this a little strange, I allowed him to proceed. The line of questioning went like this:
Q: Have you been in the Gaines, Pa. area lately? Answer: Yes
Q: Do you own a GPS? Answer: Yes, I own two but I just lost one.

The gentleman then proceeded to tell me that his mother, who lives about ¾ mile from our cabin, found my GPS on the dirt road that same day I drove away with it on my car roof.

Mary, the mother, knew nothing about the workings of a GPS. She had plans to meet her son Tom Cutugno, who lives in Lancaster County, and decided to bring the GPS along, thinking he might know something about the workings of this instrument.

Fortunately for me, one of my waypoints in my GPS was a "home" waypoint. Tom took the time and trouble to find where I lived using my GPS "home" waypoint, and drove an hour from Lancaster County to Mount Wolf to deliver it to its very grateful owner.

The only clue Tom had to get to my home was the GPS "go to" waypoint. My hat goes off to the Dimouro family, and a sincere thank you to their son and fellow sportsman, Tom Cutugno.

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