Dawson

O.K., Dawson complained that he wasn't getting enough face time on the blog for all of the hard work he does to support it. So here's a few of him posing for the cameras. Now if I could only get him to tell me what all he smells when he's gets that nose going 100 MPH :).

Posing Does

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas :). Dawson and I checked the cameras Friday in anticipation of the blizzard that is moving along the east coast today. Luckily it's to the east and north of us and all we're getting are a few snow showers. Here's some does browsing through one of the sets. It's looks like the one doe is having a little fun with the camera. If I don't know better sometimes I would think they know they're getting their pictures taken.

Turkeys

Here's some of the flock browsing through before the snow. I was sure that the turkey in about the middle of the picture in the 1st and 4th shots was a gobbler because of the more colorful(red) head when I first saw it. But after looking closely at it I think it's a hen like the rest appears to be. The reason I thought it would be a gobbler was because of the colorfully head. Hens generally have a bluish-gray head and the gobblers have brighter reds and blues. The bird in question would also have add a beard and spurs on it's legs if it was a gobbler.  Both of which I can't see on either bird. So I guess it's just a very colorful hen(s) :).
In closing I want to wish each of you and your families a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Snow Doe

Here's a couple of pics of a doe during the heavy part of the snow storm we had last Thursday. We got about four inches and most of it is still with us. Notice the snow on the deer's back. A deer's winter coat is incredibly well insulated. It's winter coat is generally two inches longer and darker than the summer coat. It is also thicker and the hairs are hollow which provides even more insulation. The snow will not melt from the deer's body temperature. They will either shake it off or the sun will melt it after the storm.

Buck and Turkeys

Got some good pics this week from the cameras. I'll start off with a good 8 point buck. I thought I'd catch a good size buck using this trail. The camera is in a small clearing in some pretty thick cover. He's a pretty good one and should really be something if he can make it until next fall. Got a couple of turkeys after one of our early light snows also. These are part of a larger flock I got some pics of earlier. When the whole flock is together there's 20 to 25 birds in it. They generally hang around on this ridge and the adjacent pasture fields. Hope to get a few more posts up later this week with some more turkeys and more snow pics.

Big Does

Here's the two big does I talked about earlier. They're coming up the trail about day break heading for their bedding site in heavy cover further up the ridge. They're probably coming from a big rye field about a 1/4 mile away. These are the type does that we try to harvest. I'm guessing both are around 200 lbs. and probably 4 to 5 years old.

Button Buck

Hooray! I don't go buckless again last week :). I did get a couple of button bucks on camera last week and a few more does including a couple of very big does. I'll post them later this week. But bucks first. This is a very good size button buck and hopefully will be sporting a nice six or eight point basket rack next year. He looking for any acorns that may have been missed earlier and it looks like in the one pic he found one. The squirrel probably isn't too please the buck is stealing his nuts.
For those of you that don't know what a button buck is it's a yearling buck born last spring. If you look closely at his forehead you'll see two small bumps or buttons where his antlers will be next year. We take extreme care each year not to kill any button bucks when we harvest a doe. This little buck may be the one sporting a big ten point rack three or four years from now.

One Antler Buck

I got pics of this buck last winter. Once in early December and again in early February. If I would have only gotten the February pics I would have just thought the he had shed the antler on the right side. But being that it was already gone in early December I'm guessing that it was broken off fighting. You can't get a good look at the pedicle to see if it was broken off flush or if something else had happened to it. No one saw him live so I got no help there.


I enjoy the snow pics just not the snow. We haven't had much more than flurries but I heard on the news today that some of the counties across the mountains from me in West Virginia have up to 30". That's a good 25" to 28" more than I want to see...great pics or not :).

One Ball - Dog vs Deer

Karen, over at Gordon Setter Crossing, posted a most see video of a dog and deer playing on her blog. Go check it out at One Ball - Dog vs Deer. It's great.

Resting Fawn

It appears that the luck I had last month in hunting season has carried over to my camera trapping... bad luck that is. I noted that I had relocated all of my cameras last Sunday and was expecting great things :). I checked the cameras a day earlier than normal because of the forecast bad weather and I'm going to a basketball game tomorrow afternoon. I only had 15 pics on the first camera I checked. That was O.K. because it was in a opening in thick cover where I didn't expect a lot of pics. I was hoping to catch one of the big bucks using the trail. The next two are both in major deer travel corridors and I expected some good pics. The end result was one small buck and a doe on one camera and not a single deer on the other :(. But that just how it goes. So I dug back through my pics and found some of a fawn and it's mama that I hadn't posted. Hopefully next week will be a better week for the camera traps.

Mock Scrape Grade

Well my mock scrape wasn't the wild success I had hope for but it did attract a few small bucks. So I'm going to give it a C rating. Actually it seemed to attract more does than bucks. I took the dripper down and moved the camera Sunday so it's officially shutdown. I think next year I'm going to try putting it on one of the logging roads or on the edge of a field instead of in the woods.

Red Fox

Well the rifle season in western Virginia closed yesterday. Last week was a carbon copy of the week before. No shooter buck sightings and very few deer seen at all. Most every one around us reported the same thing. One guy that hunts property higher up the mountain said he hunted one of his best stands for four days and never saw a deer. Now that depressing. We did harvest a couple of Does for the freezers so the season wasn't a total bust. Late muzzleloader season starts back in mid December. Hopefully we'll get a little more hunting in then. I've got a big project at work cranking up so that may cut into my time. For some reason the company I work for has this silly idea that I should actually get some work done during the hunting season ;).


Didn't get much on the cameras last week. I relocated all of them today and hopefully we'll see some bucks start to move again after things settle down for a few days. I did get a nice Red Fox on the rocks were I put the fish scrapes but I think it missed out on any of the fish. The Gray Foxes and Raccoons had cleaned it up before it got there. There's about a 2 1/2 hour time difference between the first three pics and the last two but I think it's the same fox.

I saw a huge red fox one morning from one of my stands that was colored different from any I had seen before. The one in the pics is pretty typical. Bright red, white under belly, black leggings, and a white tail tip. The Fox I saw was a darker blood red with no white under belly, black leggings, or white tail tip. When I first saw it I thought it was a coyote and got it in my scope to shoot it. But after looking at it closely I was sure it was a Fox. I was able to watch it for three or four minutes with my binoculars and just thought it was most interestingly colored. Love to get it in some pics.