Sunday, January 26, 2014

The Fog

        I’ve always enjoyed hunting on foggy mornings. Everything is so still and the animals
seem to appear out of nowhere. These mornings always remain me of the movie The Fog(1980) starring Adrienne Barbeau. And who doesn’t love Adrienne Barbeau ;)???
       These pics are from several weeks ago before we went into the deep freeze.
We’ve had the worst cold spell the last couple of weeks that we’ve had for a long time.
Most mornings have been below zero and afternoon highs in the teens or low 20’s. The batteries in my cameras are holding out better than I expected.







Sunday, January 19, 2014

Poachers

     Those of you that follow my blog know I’ve mentioned the lack of the usual big buck sightings and pictures last fall. Well it turns out there was a reason for that…poachers. There have been numerous reports of the poachers spotlighting and shooting deer along the stretch of roads that ran for many miles along the base of the mountain most of last fall. The same vehicle had been seen many times and final someone got the full license plate number. This was given to the Virginia Conservation Officers that patrol our area and they made an arrest the end of December. Turned out to be two 18 year olds and after a little pressure from the officers one of them apparently sang like canary. According to the one that sang they had been doing it three to four nights a week since early fall. The officers found numerous 10, 9, and 8 point racks in their possession with the many coming from the area we hunt in. The officers confiscated the vehicle, their guns, and other related items.
     This made us feel a little better that we hadn’t become bad hunters since the season before it was just the bucks were being killed before the season even started. While poaching has always been and will continue to be a problem but I don’t think the area has had that many bucks illegally take from it before in such a short period of time. Like I’ve noted before even where there is a lot of big bucks there aren’t very many.
     On the bright side. I did get some pics of a group of small bucks that make it through the hunting season. One look like a pretty nice 8 point that should be a nice one next year.









Sunday, January 5, 2014

Snowy Weather

      We haven’t had any really big snow falls yet this winter. Just several 2-4 inch ones. The snow lasts several days and then melts away. But I always seem to get some good shots of the deer in the snow when it does happen. Hope everyone had a great holiday season.



Little fork horn buck.


Chasing does. The second rut usually hits around the end of December.


This one looks to be more hungry than interested in does