Time of Day... or Night?

Mike hunts a section of our property during deer season. He'll tell you that a lot of the experience is about getting out into the woods all day, rather than about the actual hunt -- although venison is a popular menu choice at his household.

Spending quiet time in the woods lets you see all sorts of things you would otherwise miss. Deer have spectacular hearing, with those huge ears of theirs... and while it is fairly easy to see them in the forest, it is almost impossible to see them in a position for a clean shot, so if you think that hunting is easy, think again.

The comments this year from all the hunt camps near us balanced on the question, "where are the bucks?" We can back that up -- we'd have up to fourteen does and fawns on the lawn alone, and not a single buck. Quite a few hunters who had buck tags went home empty handed despite counting plenty of deer.

Mike sets up a stealth camera along one of the deer runs, however, a few weeks prior to the hunt -- I think it just gives them some encouragement that there are deer in the woods (sort of like Vic who likes to take a fish finder along when he goes trolling for trout)

Mike sent along a couple of his photos from this year's camera. One shows a lovely little pine marten, busily digging up acorns in the carpet of leaves.

And one of the night shots shows the big buck. Still there, by the way. Mike captured at least seven different bucks on camera, but interestingly, they are only visible in the night pictures. All the daytime shots showed the does wandering along!