New Growth

The month of May is half over and we're finally starting to see some growth on these bucks. Not all, but the more significant bucks. There are lots of ticks this year which won't help the deer body health, but I have yet to encounter any mosquitos "knock on wood" out in the woods. It was so dry last summer and fall that I'm really optimistic that bug numbers will be down this year. Things sure are greening up nicely. I was looking at pictures of one mineral site in successive weeks and the green growth is fairly significant. I've been able to confirm HighRise's survival. The previous buck I thought was HighRise was definitely NOT. He's got a good start so far and I fully expect that to continue. Notice the amount of green foliage in just five days:

The deer are sure fond of the trace mineral salt where it's never been before in their lifetime. I'm thinking I just might have more bucks to choose from than I once thought were even alive. This mineral site has produced at least four different bucks so far and there were only three at the end of the year last year, and I'm not convinced that I've seen Twigs yet, which is a little concerning. He shed early by last winter's standards and I'm just hoping he wasn't injured.  Time will tell. If he's alive, he'll show up soon.
I haven't been back to check on the mineral site to the south by the river, I'm sure it's been discovered by now. I started a new mineral site about a mile west of the new north site. So I have four new sites spanning about 8 square miles. It really should be interesting to see how and which deer use them. This latest site is in a spot I thought about beginning last spring, but never got around to it. It's a ways off the road, but the deciding factor was the placement of this year's soybeans. It seems that there will be an adequate amount of beans, they're just spread east and west - more of which ended up being on the east side of things. I also drove out to the Refuge to check my one camera out there. It had been sitting for exactly two weeks and there were 226 pictures on there. There was a one buck that was further developed in the antler department than the others, but again, there are about 5 different bucks coming in and it's only been set up for about 3 weeks or so.

I would say that by the end of summer, we should have some significant bucks on that camera. The night before I got to the camera, the same bear stopped by to show me what he thought of the stump and the trophy rock. He must've thought it was some kind of easter egg hunt and proceeded to pull the stump into two pieces. Jerk. He's a big bear, no question.