Holly May first heard the roaring noise during a youth hunting event on state game lands in the fall of 2022.
“It’s back a ways,” May said of the noise. “It was an area that I previously had liked to hunt in.” The plot of land, State Game Lands 44 in Pennsylvania’s northwest, was once home to a coal mine — since revegetated with native and pollinator-friendly plants and stocked with pheasants by the Pennsylvania Game Commission. Today, traces of its mining past are covered by tall, waving grasses and clusters of goldenrod flowers.
