Surprise! Surprise!

I don't know how, but I discovered a video of a buck that I somehow overlooked during the peak of the rut! In late October, I set my new Bushnell HD camera over a scrape that I've been set up on in years past. The camera was facing west southwest, which was not the best conditions for afternoon/evening pictures, but that's just how it had to work. Anyway, what was happening was as the sun would warm up in the middle of the afternoon, it was tripping the sensor on the camera and so every few days I was getting a series of several videos with nothing on them. This probably happened on more than a handful of instances. So as I saw several day light thumbnails on my SD card, I probably ignored them. I still uploaded them and kept them, telling myself that I'd go through them at season end and delete all the garbage to make more room on the computer. Well lo, and behold, as I clicked into the first video in the series to check it, into the frame walks an unidentified buck! He walks right to the scrape in broad daylight (9:41am) on the 16th of November! Now this would be the Wednesday after our rifle season. I hunted the day before and two days after with the bow, but this just gave me a bit more hope than I was having for the 2012 season. 

This buck looks to be a 3 year old 10 point that's got a broken right G2, a broken left G3 and about half of his left G4 is chipped off. So he'd probably be a gross 120+ deer as a three year old. I for sure don't have any photos of this buck this year, and I'm not sure if I can place him from last year either. The only buck that I'm considering this to be, is the buck I called Lucky last year. I passed him up because I wasn't sure if he was 2 or 3 when I had him at 25 yards on November 16th (exactly 1 year earlier) at about the same time of day!

I called him Lucky because he was lucky to be alive. Most hunters would've shot him, and that's the classic mistake of Minnesota. I did end up getting a few pictures of this deer after the encounter I had.

Mom also picked up one of his sheds from his two year old rack back in the cedar swamp laying in a puddle.

The deer had a big body for a two year old and his rack was above average for that age too - good mass and  nice brows. If this is Lucky in this video, and he survived this winter, it means that he'll be a four year old this coming season, which makes him Hitlist material.

A New Mineral Site - Twigs and HighRise Are Being Targeted

I've been debating for a while now, whether I should buy one more nicer camera or a couple cheaper cameras and be able to have eyes in more places. Well, without me knowing it, Streiffs Sporting Goods had a sale on Wildview IR Extreme cameras. For $59.99, that's hard to beat. I could have three for the price of one Cuddeback Capture or Attack. I elected to buy two with Steph's gracious permission. I set one up before Easter on the mineral site by the gravel pits and the second one went up in the popple ridge near where I was getting pictures of Twigs, HighRise, and the bear last fall. I brought the chainsaw in and tried to stay far enough north so a person wouldn't contaminate the whole woods when you went in to check the camera or hunt it. some trail trimming still needs to be done, but after some limbing and creating a stump up on a high hump with good dirt, the site looks pretty promising:

I probably won't check that camera very often, which is making think of the possibility of the external 12V batter that is possible with these cameras. It would be great if I could just check it once a month if not less. I am very curious to see how those two bucks do this year, especially HighRise. and a solid 125 3 year old, I think he could easily go 140 this coming season, if he gets some soybeans to the south.
Farmers were out all over the place. Some were seeding, some were discing, now we just need the temperatures to warm up.
Here's one pic of a buck from the north camera:

This afternoon I walked and walked trying to cover as much area as I could by myself. No luck finding Pencil's antlers. I'm sure he was out in the new cutting and it's like a needle in a stack of needles out there. After a couple trips, here's what I've covered:

Pencil Is Alive!

Pencil will be celebrating his 5th birthday in May and we're excited to see what type of crown he decides to put on this summer. I'm going to guess that he'll remain a straight up 8 point (a 5% chance he'll have a very small G4 or two), but just get a little more height, a little more mass, and should gross about 130 if we're lucky. Even with a good growing season, it's hard for an 8 point to reach 130. He'll need 57" antlers and a 16" spread to gross 130. He could do it.
Mom and Dad have had their cameras out throughout the majority of this mild winter and luckily after we moved some of them around, they captured a few pictures of a buck that I'm 98% sure is Pencil. He looks a little run down, but the green shutes are coming out and he's only going to have more and more food as we finish out April.

A few crazy things to note: on our way to Grand Forks on Monday, April 9th, I saw two fresh roadkill bucks that still had antlers. Not to say they couldn't have been a few days old, but there was no damage from birds etc. Secondly, south of Sherack, there was a guy out seeding soybeans! April 9th! Two years ago we couldn't believe that our farmers were getting out in the fields by the end of April. We've had some wind and some cold lately, but the fields are drying out very well. The forecast is supposed to warm up and cool off a few times before we hit the 70's again. Hopefully we get some heat to encourage some more early green up.