Saturday December 4, 2010

It was 27 degrees when I headed into the woods this morning. The wind was whipping in all directions so I’m sure the wind-chill temps were in the single digits.

At first light I could hear a deer crunching through the leaves. I couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from with the wind. I finally spotted it below me. It went through a hole and stopped. When I pulled my binoculars up I could see the hind quarters of the deer. In the second that it took me to drop my binoculars and raise my gun the deer started to trot down the hill. Although I couldn’t see its head I knew that it had cut a track and was on its way. It appeared to me that it was a buck on the prowl, but I can’t be certain. That was the only action I had for the day.

I hunted with my dad this morning. At 9:45 he had four does trot off the hill in front of him. They kept looking behind them but nothing followed within sight. Then, 15 minutes later a buck slowly made his way down the hill. From a distance dad said it looked like it had a good rack. It was really wide. By the time the deer made it to 40 yards from dad he determined that he would give it a free pass. After talking about the deer we’re pretty sure it was the last buck I have on my trail camera from 11/21. It’s a really wide 5 pointer. I think he has bad genes. Hopefully we will be able to see if I’m right next year if we get him on camera again.

I checked one of my cameras while I was in the woods. I had 200 images in the last week. After I scanned through the images I determined that this new camera is starting to irritate me. I have a lot of blank pictures. It appears that the camera is taking pictures before the subject is in the field of view. I did get a lot of photos, but I couldn’t see them that good when I put the card in my camera. I’ll have to take them home and view them on the computer. One of the first photos looked like the hind quarter of a bear. It’s really hard to tell but I think it’s a possibility. I have a lot of  pictures of does and a few that I can’t tell what they are. For some reason I have a lot of pictures in the dark. Most of my pictures in this area have been in the daylight until these.

The picture below is a buck dad killed a few years ago in the same place where he let the buck go this morning. This buck was chasing a doe when he met his demise.

Dad killed this buck in the same spot he passed the buck this morning.

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