Monday, November 28, 2016

I didn’t have much time to do much after work today, but I did make it into the woods for two hours to hunt. When I got to the parking area, I noticed a familiar vehicle already parked in the spot. Since I was familiar with the person driving it, I chose to change my plans and go in a different direction than I had originally planned. The guy usually hunted on the same ridge that I wanted to go sit on, so I didn’t want to interfere with his hunt.

I decided to head to a place where I had some cameras set up. I hadn’t been there since I returned from the Midwest, and this would give me a good opportunity to see if anything had been moving in front of the cameras.

I was disappointed with the lack of sign in the snow. There weren’t many tracks and most of them seemed to be at least a few days old. When I got near the cameras, I came across more tracks, which gave me a little hope.

Instead of pulling the cards, I found a place to sit and nestled in behind a big tree. It would be dark in less than two hours, and I wanted to make the most of my time in the woods. I hoped that I might catch a buck sneaking around the knobs while it searched for a doe in the last few minutes of daylight.

As the sun set behind the mountain, the temperature dropped and the woods became eerily quiet. I could have heard a mouse making its way through the leaves from 100 yards away. Unfortunately, no deer seemed to be moving.

Getting up and slinging my backpack across my shoulders, I quickly moved toward my cameras to see if anything had moved past them in the last few days. When I pulled the card on the first one, I was pleasantly surprised to see that a nice buck had followed a few does past it in the last few days. The does came through right before dark, and he followed them a few minutes later when it was completely dark. At least I know he’s in the area because I have pictures of the same deer in the same general area from earlier in the year.

When I got to the second camera on my way out, it was all but dark. There weren’t too many pictures on the camera, but the few on there were of bucks. One was just a little spike in the daylight, and the other was a good buck with a high rack. He was in there a little bit before daylight in the last week. It could be the same buck that was on the other camera. With the different angle, it’s hard to tell.

I feel good about my adventure tonight, even though it’s one of the first times I’ve been in that piece of woods this year without seeing a deer. I’m running out of time. This season has treated me well, and I’ve learned quite a bit about different areas.

Here is what I found on my cameras.

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