Sit # 8 - Desolation

I wanted to get close to a certain bottleneck in the Refuge so I tried to put the SE wind in my favor (not a perfect plan) and see if I could just observe some deer on the move this morning. I saw a set of eyes on my way in to the stand. Who knows what it was, 'cause about 30 minutes later I hearda timberwolf howling about a mile and half away to the northwest. I sat in what seemed like decent conditions for deer movement. There was a lot of shotgun blasts going on (duck season opened on Saturday). I sat for about 2.5 hours and didn't see a deer. After I packed my stuff up and crawled down, I wanted to walk down this logging road that runs perpendicular to this bottleneck. I wanted to check for good trails. There were about 3 or 4 all right near each other. There was also a fresh scrape from this year on the trail. I found a nice way to access the three trails if I have a more direct south wind in the morning, or a nice north/northwest wind in the evening. I went and took down a camera I had set up another place and brought it back to that scrape. My thought is that it's a decent buck (maybe Lefty) using that area. Probably was a bachelor group's hangout at one point. We'll have to see. I won't be back to check it until after the weekend at least.The temperature has been higher than average and we aren't supposed to see that fall until into the middle of the month. I guess I'll be patient and hope for a quiet evening hunt.Oh yeah! I forgot to post that I did finally get a picture of "Lefty". I wrote about dad and I seeing him back in the middle of July. That makes three consecutive years of getting pictures of him. I resigned to aging him at 2 years old in 2008, 3 year old in 2009, and now 4 years old in 2010. However, every time I look at his 2008 picture, I can't help but think he's a yearling. His head is so small, his neck is so tiny, and his body is much lighter than a deer I'm sure was to standing with him (not shown). If that were possible, that would put him as only a three and a half year old this year!

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