10.5 months later

I must've really lost the ambition after missing those last two bucks in Alberta last year.
The year finished out alright. More close calls. So many almosts I shot at a buck the following day and grazed right under his armpit. He was a very respectable 140" 8point. I just jerked the trigger I think. There was a tiny bit of white hair cut and laying on the ground where he stood. Unbelievable. Anyway, I flew back home and tried muzzleloading a bit. Rattled up two bucks that came right up behind me in the ground blind and winded me. Just my luck. Whatever. So it was tag soup for me and Stephanie in 2008.
On to 2009.
This has been the year of mineral sites. We've got plenty of pictures of nice bucks in the late spring/early summer, but since the third week of June, all but two bucks have disappeared. I only got one day's pictures in July of the other two. One is Hanger, a buck we've known about for two years now, and his sidekick Crazy 8. Both are in the 130s. Both would make beautiful european mounts.
I have four cuddeback captures and one wildveiw camera. I got pictures of a nice 10 or 11 point, but he's not on property I have permission to hunt. I've tried to shift some cameras around between the refuge and the hill, but it's just been 2 and 3 year old bucks this August/September.
The biggest bucks we've seen lately have been after dark while shining.
I'm beginning to right again so I can track some of the happenings in the whitetail woods this fall. I'm trying to find correlations between the last two years and this year and so far, nothing correlates. But, it's October 8th, and the Mini-Rut is about to swing in. I am just going to bet that I'll see some increases in pre-rut activity in the next week and a half.
The new moon was on Oct 11/Nov 9/Dec 9 in 2007. In 2008, it was on Sept 29/Oct 28/Nov 27/Dec 27. This year it falls on Sept 18/Oct 18/Nov 16/Dec 16. In 2007, I shot my 5 1/2 year old 144" gross buck on Oct 13th - two days after the new moon and the deer activity that night was intense. There were deer all over in the fields before dark, which isn't too common on those roads that see a bunch of hunting pressure. If there is any correlation between rut/deer activity and the moon phase, this year is about a week behind the moon phases of 2007. I know that photoperiodism (or the shortening of light in the day) is really what consistently triggers most whitetail changes including the rut, but there have to be other secondary triggers. Those are what I am trying to figure out.
Tuesday night the 6th of October I was driving home after an evening sit and I was shining in some fields. It was 8:10 pm and there were three bucks crossing a bean field in front of me. They had to have been on their feet before last light. Either that or they aren't bedding too far from the road, which is also possible.
As we have more and more nights of frost, the natural forage in the woods will die off. The deer will be forced to feed a little more in the open. This should happen in the next week or two - overlapping the new moon (the darkest nights possible).
October 16, 17, 18, & 19 have the closest sunrise - moonrise/sunset - moonset overlap throughout the month, with the very closest being on the 17th - the day of the new moon. This only means that the moon will be at it's peak at around the same time the sun is at it's peak. I've read articles that infer that this has a sort of 'pull' or 'pressure' and that it provokes animal activity. We'll see about that.
I'm trying to monitor a little more closely the weather also. That tuesday night, the barometric pressure was dropping from 30. somethin on monday to 29.52 on wednesday. I don't know if that is significant yet, but we'll see if I can more parallels.
Hopefully this blog will help me remember the details.