Twigs? Is that you?

I finally got my Bushnell camera back from the company and guess what? It's a totally different camera! They stopped making my model and came out with a widescreen camera that only shoots in 720p. I was a little upset at first, but I thought I'd give it a try. I figured that my most likely bear attack spot was the refuge so I cabled the bear safe around it and hung it to the tree. Well it sat for a week and I figured I would make sure everything was ok with it and check what the images looked like out of it. This is a classic example of why you always should carry a point and shoot camera or a viewfinder of some kind with you into the woods. Since this camera shoots in widescreen and it cables at the top, most of the deers' bodies are half cut off. Since I didn't bring a viewfinder to check that out, I set it back just how I had it. However, the pictures revealed our stud buck to be growing quite nicely for the end of may.

He could be a dandy, we'll have to see what kind of genetics he shows off coming up from his main beams. Maybe he'll only be an 8. Maybe he'll be really short tined. I doubt it.
Setting this camera out in the refuge allowed me to take my broken cover - Capture to another spot. I chose to set it up along the river where I didn't really know what to expect. I had checked on the mineral site and just saw some deer tracks, nothing much, but thought I would try it there. I hung it on the 24th of May. That same night the batteries died. After the batteries died, it rained for about 2 or 3 days. I went back to check it and when I took the cover off, water poured out of the camera! My stomach sank as I thought for sure this camera was ruined. I took it home and of course the memory card didn't work at first. Eventually, I took the camera apart, dried the many pieces and put it back together and let it air dry overnight. When I dried off the memory card, and tried it again, I got nothing, finally I figured out that it would play in the point and shoot camera, so I hooked the camera up to the computer and loaded the images that way. The first deer into the mineral site was a yearling doe. All of a sudden a great looking buck entered the frame.

At first I thought this has to be a new buck. he's got great mass and his G2s are just starting to emerge. A few pictures later another decent buck walks up to the camera for a sniff. This buck looks a lot like HighRise.

Now I'm starting to think that the duo is back together again, so I had to scan through some pictures of Twigs to compare. The mass is a good match. The brows even are fine to me, but if this is Twigs, he is either going to be very palmated or his G2s are starting significantly closer to his brows than last year, which is totally possible. The other possibility is that this really is an entirely different buck, which would be fabulous. When you look at the faces, it's no doubt Twigs, but when you look at the G2 starting point, it doesn't look possible.

Needless to say, I'm very curious to see what this 5 year old and his 4 year old decide to wear for headgear in 2012. I did get the camera functioning again. I put a nice water tight seal around the outside. Hopefully that helps.

Meanwhile, up on the Hill, I managed to get one isolated picture of Pencil out on the edge of the cedar swamp.

It looks like his brow on his is going to have a hefty sticker or it will basically be a split brow tine.  He's really putting on the inches this year. Mass, points, length - so far he's looking like he very well could break 130". His body is about to take a big transformation as soon as he starts to pack on the food.
Speaking of food, the soybeans went from just poking out of the ground on May 20th, to about 3 or 4 inches on the 30th of May.

This creates a larger window of ample food to put even more inches of nutrients into that velvet covered eye candy. At the Refuge, they even planted corn in the Sanctuary. This is something that as not been done for many years.