The time is finally here. The dew is holding longer in the mornings, the leaves are drying out, and the velvet is peeling. I always anticipate the first pictures of bucks out of velvet and I've always wanted a picture of a nice buck with velvet hanging of his rack. I haven't gotten that yet this year, but I have seen a couple crack the surface. This last week it looked like Blacknose and PegLeg checked out what each other was worth. I got some pictures of Blacknose bleeding on the inside of his mainbeam where the velvet was broken open. I didn't notice it right away, but a little while later on the same night, PegLeg came in with blood spilled all over the left side of his face! Now it makes perfect sense. If you study the pictures further, you can even see what part of PegLeg's rack caused the tear as there's a little piece of Blacknose's blood/velvet on the outside of his mainbeam. It's pretty neat.
I thought that the next card pull would reveal one of these two out of velvet, but so far that's not the case. Basically it's the same bucks coming in to the Trophy Rock and I can't wait to sit there opening weekend. I also got a picture of a flying squirrel, which I didn't know lived up around our area.
On the bear front, Donny and Tara were up this Labor Day weekend and I set them up in the big oak in an attempt to kill that big bear. They didn't end up seeing any bears, but it was good to do a test run with stands, equipment, etc. Donny may have time later this fall to come back before the season is over. The next evening (Monday the 3rd), Joe and I sat in the same tree with the same hopes. Nothing. Again, we got to test out the GoPros and Joe's new Rebel T3i. Last night we sat one more time and had a yearling bear come in to the bait. He was pretty small, but he had a beautiful hide. He was in there the night before and that morning as well.
It's a good thing that it was just a yearling because everything that could have gone wrong - did. My GoPro was acting up because of a bad memory card, Joe's GoPro thought his card was full, and worst of all, Joe's battery died on his Canon. What a mess! Good thing it was A) bear season and B) just a little bear. I guess we learned a bunch of lessons in a short amount of time.
A mile and a half northeast I got some more pictures of the big boy again. He was at the camera one hour before I was. So now I need to get my other stand hung for him up there. I believe he will do the same thing he did last year - travel long distances between acorns and sunflowers. This site is in a pretty good spot to intercept him while it's still light out.
Only 10 days until the opener. And 10 days until I'm 30. I don't know which one is more exciting!
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