It's almost embarrassing how long it's been since I've written, but maybe even more disappointing is that I haven't picked up on many new deer. I've picked up on a few younger bucks, one of promise is Black Nose. I've mentioned him in the seasons past and so far he's living up to my predictions as a 3 year old. He should be grossing around 140. He looks to be in the same family line as Contender and maybe even pencil with the way his main beams come up and sweep at the end. He's pretty nice. Another dilemma buck.
As far as Pencil himself goes, I have had very minimal activity with him. Mom and Dad have two pictures of a mature buck - one at the later part of June and one in the beginning of July, but nothing that can make me 100% sure that it's even him. Neither photo show the bucks brow tines and right now, that is the give away with Pencil. This year he has one split brow and one bladed brow.
I was able to watch him for about 5-10 minutes one night in the middle of June. He had just started working on his G2s. I set up a camera in the Tweeten woods assuming that's where I'd get some better quality pictures of him more fully developed, but that has not been true either. Apparently, he's been in the big woods this entire time. Lessons Learned: 1) When bucks reach a more mature status (5+), their core area shrinks quite drastically. The same was true last fall with Splitbrow. Scabby 9 was picked up on two cameras last summer as either a 5 or 6 year old and was shot between the two cameras on the morning of November 11th. 2) On a year where the mosquitos are minimal, there is less urgency to evacuate the timber. I'm sure that by the end of summer we'll lock on to him and get a better idea of what he'll score, etc.
The biggest disappointment of the summer so far is this buck that I had picked up on the river. I had thought that he was Twigs and he still might be, but the issue is that the buck disappeared on June 15th.
I was getting pictures every couple days of him and he was showing some very impressive progress. It's been a month and a half and I'm positive that this buck would be around 150 at this point. I have moved cameras around in an attempt to pick up on his whereabouts, but I have not been successful. Hopefully by the time I return home, he'll pop up.
There were more bucks that were coming in as well, that have all vanished. Hopefully I see more of them this fall.
I got a few pictures on the fence line on the west edge of the swamp of a decent wide buck in the end of June. Not positive what deer he is, but my thought is that he's the nice wide 9 point that was a two year old last year. I pulled that camera down and moved it back to the river. I had another issue with the same camera that had water pour out of it in the beginning of June. Same thing happened. So right now, I'm one camera down.
The mineral site in the gravel pit actually produced quite a few bucks with no one in particular spending lots of time nearby. Here were some of them:
A nicer 4 year old that I've been seeing there the last two seasons:
And a couple of 3 year olds that we could likely see during the rut:
I'm contemplating trying out the field scan mode over the bean field, just to see what I'm missing. However, the deer aren't just coming out at dark. They're coming out after dark. We'll see how I can utilize that camera differently this year.
Lastly are the bucks that I am hoping to find this summer: PegLeg, Chippy, Bullwinkle, HighRise, Twigs, and others. We set up some new spots to try and locate some of these deer, but like I said, older bucks' home ranges shrink up (especially during the summer and early fall. It's not going to be easy to just stumble upend these more mature deer. Finding food sources and using them to our advantage will help, but some bucks are just too cautious to be wandering out in the open. My hopes are high for August.
