quilbilly
12-25-2011, 01:03 AM
I sent this to our local outdoor writer in the newspaper along with my occasional fishing report. Thought you all might enjoy it. I hunt muzzleloader for deer and there is no season for us in our neighborhood so I just watch---
Mainly I am writing about a mystery. Early last year I installed a permanent trail camera on one of our walking trails on the backside of our property near Leland Creek. With the camera we have captured lots of deer, of course, plus a bear, a few coyotes, and a very large tom cougar a few weeks ago. The main thing I have watched is the bucks - one in particular. This particular buck in not very old but has a huge body well over 200# on the hoof. We have gotten him on several occasions since early spring which has allowed me to watch his antlers develop from 2" long to a rather spindly 2x3 in contrast to his huge body. About the first of September when the archery deer season started, it was as if he, the other smaller bucks, and mature does we saw regularly in our yard all summer were swallowed up by the earth. There was nothing to see in our yard or on the cam except a lonely bobcat and that cougar until three days after the end of the late archery season. That buck, the smaller ones, and he does are now back calmly browsing our yard again and attacking our fruit trees.
How do those deer do that? I swear I didn't teach them to read the hunting regs! They had to be close by (maybe on our property) but there weren't even any tracks.
Anyone who accuses deer hunting of being easy hasn't met our blacktail deer.
Mainly I am writing about a mystery. Early last year I installed a permanent trail camera on one of our walking trails on the backside of our property near Leland Creek. With the camera we have captured lots of deer, of course, plus a bear, a few coyotes, and a very large tom cougar a few weeks ago. The main thing I have watched is the bucks - one in particular. This particular buck in not very old but has a huge body well over 200# on the hoof. We have gotten him on several occasions since early spring which has allowed me to watch his antlers develop from 2" long to a rather spindly 2x3 in contrast to his huge body. About the first of September when the archery deer season started, it was as if he, the other smaller bucks, and mature does we saw regularly in our yard all summer were swallowed up by the earth. There was nothing to see in our yard or on the cam except a lonely bobcat and that cougar until three days after the end of the late archery season. That buck, the smaller ones, and he does are now back calmly browsing our yard again and attacking our fruit trees.
How do those deer do that? I swear I didn't teach them to read the hunting regs! They had to be close by (maybe on our property) but there weren't even any tracks.
Anyone who accuses deer hunting of being easy hasn't met our blacktail deer.