OUTDOORS: Out of Africa

By AD CRABLE, Outdoor Trails
Staff Writer

If you enter John E. Byler's home in Manheim Township and take a left from the kitchen, you won't step into the family room.

Rather, you enter first one, then another of Byler's vaulted-ceiling trophy rooms, containing mounts and memories of the hunter's big-game trips dating back to the 1970s.

The rooms, which total 1,400 square feet, about the size of a ranch home, display the prizes of hunts from the likes of Africa, Alberta and Alaska.

    VIDEO: Out of Africa

The first room, built 22 years ago, has Byler's momentoes from North American hunts. One wall is devoted to large-racked whitetail deer, Byler's favorite game animal. There are bucks from Texas, Iowa and the farm Byler owns near Centreville, Md., on the state's Eastern Shore.

The largest buck, from Texas, scored a mouth-watering 225 points.

Other animals found in the airy room include a lynx, white coyote, javelina, Dahl sheep, grizzly bear, cinnamon phase black bear, moose, 14-foot alligator from the Everglades and various waterfowl.

After an 18-day hunting trip across 175 square miles to Tanzania in 2004, Byler had to add a second room for the 28 animal species he brought back.

Part of the room is like a frozen zoo. There's a gerenuk, a long-necked antelope, stretching on two legs to reach succulent leaves on a bush tree. On the floor, a 21-foot crocodile with snout agape and baring teeth. On the wall, next to a bush pig, is a warthog of "The Lion King" fame.

 A male lion, 18 years old and 550 pounds when shot, with a mane worn from years of fighting, walks through tufts of grass in the bush, dragging a freshly killed reedbuck.

The lion had wandered into camp at 3 a.m. one night and growled. "I thought it was this weird bird," Byler recalls. He tracked the lion the next day for a shot.

The heaviest animal from the safari: a Cape buffalo weighing more than 2,000 pounds. The smallest: a tiny dik-dik, an antelope not much larger than a rabbit with horns less than 3 inches long.

The room is not without levity. A baboon sits on the railing at the entrance, holding a sign, "Welcome To The African Room." Byler's computer chair is made from the hide of a leopard he shot.

Besides the hunter himself, the safari included 11 other people, including a guide, trackers, cooks and skinners.

One of the highlights in Byler's eyes was spending considerable time with the local Maasai tribe, who call themselves "People of the Cattle."

They live in mud huts made of cow manure, do not kill cattle, sleep on cowhide and don't believe in the hereafter. Byler did not partake in a popular elixir consisting of aged blood and cow milk.

Byler grew up in Smyrna, Del. He was introduced to hunting at age 8, hunting rabbits with a single-shot 20-gauge shotgun. At age 19 he visited a brother in Lancaster and liked it so much he moved here.

 A former executive vice president of Carlos R. Leffler Inc, Byler owns Byler Management, a holding company that, along with his son, Jonathan, owns three golf courses and is the co-owner of Penn Cinema.

Byler has spent more than $1 million on taxidermy, trophy rooms and hunts to some of the most remote spots in North America and Africa.

But, more than anything, he says, the hunts are not about shooting animals.

"It's seeing nature and different parts of the world," he says. "It's a wonderful experience being out there in no-man's land and not hearing the phone ring. Some parts of the world I would only have seen as a hunter."

Byler has had his share of adventures on hunts.

On a grizzly bear hunt in Alaska in 1976, Byler shot freehand at a running grizzly bear amid 40-mph wind. The wounded bear ran into thick woods. The guide shot into the air to try to flush it out. It didn't work.

With the sun setting, the guide and Byler decided to go in after the bear. They crept in, back to back, rifles at the ready. The bear appeared, rose up on its hind legs and roared, ready to charge. Byler finished it off from 20 feet away.

On another bear hunt, a guide went outside to throw out the trash. Unbeknownst to him, a cinnamon black bear was sniffing around and jumped at the man. The guide was so scared he ran through the camp's screen door.

Byler has traveled afar for trophies. But just as dear to him are spring turkey hunts on 150 acres of woods he owns off of Route 501 on the Lancaster-Lebanon line.

And, truth be told, the moments he enjoys most are not in the far-away bush of Africa, but an autumn day with cobalt blue skies and brilliant foliage on his beloved farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. There, he climbs into a treestand with bow in hand and waits for a whitetail deer to appear ghostlike.

It's a thrill and anticipation he hopes never become jaded.


Ad Crable can be reached at acrable@LNPnews.com or 481-6029.