Anthony Vecchio needs an escape from his everyday life. With full time union work, five children all under the age of 13, a wife with difficult medical conditions, volunteer fire department work and all the other things in life that come his way, he never has the time to enjoy hunting or fishing any more.

He’s 47-years-old and a full-time drywall finisher who lives in New Jersey and works in Philadelphia. As a 26-year, dedicated member of the IUPAT, Anthony says union work is the only way to go. From the time he joined to today, the union has doubled its size and is reaching more territory in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. “I owe my life and everything I have to the work I’ve done in the union,” he said. “It supports my family and I’m very grateful for the opportunity. Hopefully one day I’ll be able to retire and that will be through my union benefit package. It puts our kids through school too.”

Day in and day out Anthony is working commercial jobs from high rise buildings to large warehouses as a professional drywall finisher. They’ll work on jobs that require 30,000 sheets of sheetrock to smaller projects. But when Anthony gets home from the job, that’s when the real work begins. He owns and operates a small farm with his wife and five kids – three sons ages 12, 10 and 7; two daughters ages 9 and 5. They grow and sell some produce and also have livestock, but the farm’s main purpose is for the family’s own consumption. Besides the busyness of the farm life, there’s school functions, extracurriculars, and volunteer work.
For the past 20 years, Anthony has been a volunteer fire fighter with his local community. On top of that, he also is involved with his church volunteering to run a fund-raising carnival every year. And the list goes on – Anthony’s neighbors are his ‘Gun Club’ and he’s offered his land to build a clubhouse for the group. It’s a way for everyone to have a place to hunt. “It’s getting kind of crappy around here to hunt. Developments are going up everywhere.”
So with all the craziness that’s happening in Anthony’s life, there’s hardly room for hunting and fishing, his two main passions and escapes. “The kids’ baseball just got over and football starts first week in August. There’s never a chance to take time off to hunt or fish mainly due to all the family stuff.” Even when he takes the family fishing it can be a fiasco. Anthony runs between each of the kids putting worms on hooks, untangling line from trees, pulling kids out of the lake and never gets a chance to set a line himself. When he gets a week to deer hunt in the fall, him and his wife are cooking meals at 3a.m. and cleaning up at 8p.m. and doing it all over the next day. “It just never stops,” he said.
What Anthony would love to do for an ‘escape to the wild’ is to go whitetail hunting out west. “I had a chance to go whitetail hunting 10 years ago with an outfitter who was a client’s brother-in-law, but I wasn’t able to go. I’ve been kicking myself ever since for not doing it. It’s a once in a lifetime thing for me – I’ll never be able to go out to do an whitetail hunt any where. There’s just no way I could afford it with my family to support. Plus I’d love to have a good size buck hanging up.”
Just getting outdoors is a little escape for Anthony. He started fishing at a young age because he grew up around lakes. His father would often take him to the shore to do saltwater fishing and clamming. Hunting came later in Anthony’s teen years when he finally got a gun and went hunting with friends of the family. He was hooked. From then on, he’s been hunting small game and every deer season. He’ll even let his kids take off school for the opening day of deer season, if their grades are good. “I enjoy taking my kids hunting. My sons get up in a treestand and when a deer is 20 yards away they miss their shot because they’re shaking so much. I enjoy hunting with them and passing on what I think is great – hunting, fishing, outdoors and the respect for nature. We don’t shoot anything we don’t eat. We all try to do it right.”