Memorial Weekend

I have been spending less time in the woods lately. With the outbursts of ticks, mosquitos, and poison ivy, it will likely be less and less in the months to come. However, I will still be checking and moving trail cameras. Steph and I were out yesterday morning cutting a few trees down so I could see another50 yards from my permanent stand. Also I wanted to cut until we hit a tree big enough to set up a trophy rock out there. Well we finally found one and right near the end of falling it, I got the chain pinched in the tree. "Stupid Tree!"
After getting dad's chainsaw out there, he and I were able to cut just enough on the side to roll the tree off the stump and, more importantly, off the saw. I still have about a dozen trees to cut to make thing how I want it down that strip, but I suppose I'll be back out there again in a week or two.
As far as trail cameras, I'm still only running the one. The number of pictures have lessened a bit, but I'm optimistic that by putting out the old thick molasses, they'll pick up here in the next two weeks. I ended up switching the camera to video though. The biggest reason I wanted to switch it to video mode is because Sunday morning the 25th, we woke up to five bucks crossing the corner of the yard up at The Hill. This tells me that they're finally getting into their bachelor groups. When the camera is set on picture mode, it takes a picture when triggered, but then has to wait one full minute to process the picture. A lot can happen in one minute. Those five bucks were there and gone in about two or three minutes. So, I set the camera to take 25 second videos. Yes, the camera still needs one minute to reset, but at least this way, we'll get a better look at each deer. The only downside to video mode is how much it sucks the batteries. I'll likely have to go change them in two weeks.
Anyway, it's going to be interesting to watch the antler growth of these bucks. There were at least three of them that I would call mature (4 years old or older).

Ursus Americanus

After an amazing lunch over at Grandpa and Grandma's, we headed up to the hill. We called to see if Chris and Jill wanted to come up, which they did. Jill and Gabriella stayed in the cabin and relaxed. I don't hold it against Gabriella for not coming out in the woods. It would take her forever to cover any ground. Five month-olds. Haha.

Anyway, we headed into the cedars and split up. Stephanie was up for a couple days and her and mom went together for the first part of the walk. Chris and I walked about 30 yards apart from each other in the cedars. After about 15-20 minutes, I came across a skull. I thought it was a deer skull, which wouldn't be anything too out of the ordinary, but when I turned it over, I saw the molars were way too big. You might think I'm an idiot, but half of the top part of it was gone, deteriorated or something, but just not there. Also, the canine teeth were missing, which would've been a giveaway. I realized it was a bear skull. It was definately a small bear, maybe a yearling. I walked over towards Chris and showed him. It was the first bear skull I'd ever found. We continued on walking and after about 5 more minutes, i saw another skull that was sitting upside down and was in good condition. I knew right away that this was another bear skull. This was pretty weird to find my first two bear skulls 75 yards from each other. Both of which were small (yearling) cub skulls. My theory is that they were old enough to make it into hibernation, but if mom was killed or something, they may have left the den in search of food and just didn't make it. Or they were both shot and left, but there wasnt really any place to sit and hunt back there. On this leg of our walk, Chris and I also came across the biggest deer droppings I've ever seen. Now that might now fascinate many people, but when you've seen as much deer poop as I have, and suddenly some sticks out as enormous, it's strikes me as interesting. But we kept crossing it and so that kind of let us know a general area of travel or time spent by, what I think was, an older deer - probably a buck. Eventually, we met up with mom and Steph and made our way to the Little Hill.

We all walked south towards the road and weaved in and out of good deer trails from the early winter. We popped out 100 yards from the road and decided it was getting too wet. Oh, by the way, Christopher didn't have water boots on. By this point, he's absolutely soaked up to his knees. Poor guy. Anyway, we turned East and curled back north, trying not to cover our same tracks. We headed north-northeast back towards the three corner. We saw a lot of rubs and buck sign from november, but nothing as far as antlers.

I'm betting most of my money that for whatever the reason, the deer spent most of their time in the cedar swamps. Both at the Hill and at the Refuge. I might get out a couple more times before green up, but you can bet I'll stick near the edges of the cedars.