Season Is Open - Sits # 1, 2, & 3

Well my birthday came on the opening day of archery season this year and I was lucky enough to be able to sit out in the stand to watch the sunrise. My first sit was spent on the swamp ridge, where I had the only pictures of HighRise this year. I had a south wind on Saturday and I didn't have many other locations set up for a south wind. As expected, it still took me longer than I planned to get hunkered down and hunting. Trying to film your hunt is a lot of work. Hopefully it will be worth it. I sat from about 6:25-8:55am. I only saw a pine martin.
The next afternoon, Sunday the 16th, Steph was taking her turn and I was running the camera. We sat in the nook north of the firing line. We had some fun, but saw no deer.
This morning, I sat on the swamp ridge again in hopes of seeing HighRise again, but he never showed his face. I haven't got a single picture of him after the 5th of September.
I was able to check a few cameras lately and have picked up on a few deer. Most importantly, I suppose, I got a few pictures of PegLeg out of velvet. Finally.

Blacknose, Gnarly and the Stud 2 year old all showed their faces briefly.

I checked the camera I set out looking for Pencil. I did not get any photos of him, but I did get a nice two year old 10 that NO ONE CAN SHOOT.

There are even some very similar characteristics as the one dad shot last year. This buck needs two more years.
Today I was able to check the camera on the spring. It had over 1,000 images on it and only one buck - Gnarly. He showed up on the evenings of the 7th, 10th, 11th, and 12th.

I also had a few images of two brothers who I figured out who they were. I'm glad they left my camera alone.

Yesterday when I moved the camera that I placed at the refuge, I was going for a walk and came across a water hole that was still holding water. It was completely annihilated by the deer. Needless to say I hung the camera there. I'm interested to see what shows up there. The only difficult part is that there were literally dozens of trails coming to and from the water. I was only able to place it in one place where there was a tree near by. Hopefully that's good enough until I can switch them out with the Bushnell on field scan mode. I was pondering something today. This spring and summer were looking like Pencil would be a local deer. That might be in question for this fall. Bucks tend to move into another bucks range once the more dominant one leaves, dies, or gets killed. It was looking like Pencil was going to fill the void created by Splitbrow. The more I was thinking about it, the more likely that he may seek to replace Scabby 9. Although there were no beans out around Pete's this summer. A neighbor to the south planted a corn food plot. That could keep him nearby. I could try run a camera out there for a little while. Just to see if I can find him. I hope I'm wrong and that he's just laying low on the top of the ridge eating acorns and getting fat.