I wish them luck ! I will gladly make the ride occasionally for a good country breakfast and I would hope locals and shore traffickers will wheel in too.
I had the good fortune to spend a full day and into part of the night at Buzby's in 1979 or 1980 to work the deer check station. Working a check station was a requirement of a wildlife management class I was taking at Rutgers at the time. I was a busy all day back when all the clubs in the Chatsworth area were running full bore.
The deer check stations are a personal and fondly remembered part of Jersey Pines history for me. Many bars, general stores (like Buzby's) and small sporting good stores served as check stations back in those days and for good reason. It brought sportsmen and sportswomen together with a common bond that always lead to deer stories out in a starlit parking lot on a crisp December night. For the mom and pop sporting goods shops like Atco Sports, it meant more business, as the hunters would come in and re-stock on a few things after the hunt. For the bars, it meant a bunch of excited hunters toasting each other after checking in their deer and staying "awhile" to celebrate. I never left the Pic in Shamong or the Pic II in Ancora without tossing back a few cold ones and a shot or two before I went home with my deer.
Now, it's a somewhat sterile and distant operation which allows checking your deer online or by phone. However, the operators I have talked to have all been out of State people with lively personalities. I checked a deer in the dark in a farm field on New Year's Eve a few years ago and me and the lady had a wonderful conversation about hunting and sincerely wished each other a happy new year.
