Sits # 10, 11, 12, & 13 - It's Heating Up!

Sit number 10 was spent in the tamarack swamp with Zach and although we had conditions in our favor, we were only able to lay eyes on one deer - a lone doe (according to her fresh tracks on the new snow) That was Friday morning the 26th.
The next sit was the very next morning (the 27th) with my young friend, Jonah. Jonah's a 7th grader and this is his first year bowhunting, so I offered to take him out. I picked him up at 6:30am and we climbed right into our set for the morning sit. It was pretty chilly, lows around 19 or so. We didn't see anything that morning, and when I asked him how he was holding up, he trembled before he even spoke. "Are you getting cold?", I asked. "Yeah. I'm really cold." I figured rather than make him second guess why in the world we were sitting out there in those temperatures, I would just have us climb down so he can get a crack at something else another day.
That same evening, I took Steph out to the same set. Unfortunately, this was a Saturday. Not only was it a Saturday, it was the weekend before rifle opener, so everybody and their uncle was trying to get things ready for rifle season, which is this coming weekend. So we had company all evening shooting, yelling, and driving four-wheelers without mufflers. To top the whole evening off, I forgot the battery to the camera. Talk about absent-minded!
Lastly, on Tuesday morning the wind was perfect to hunt SE of the landing, but the catch was there was no stand down there. So the night before, just before dark, I pulled the stand down from where I was trying to kill HighRise. So tuesday morning, I packed it in quite a ways and well before dark. I was fully set up with about 20 minutes to just let things get quiet. At about 7:55am, I heard that favorite sound of the season - a twig snap under the hoof of a whitetail. By the sound of it, it had to be a buck. It was making so much noise. Turns out it was 4 deer: a doe, 2 fawns, and a yearling doe. They approached me from the east and just kept walking past me and out of sight. That was it for that morning, but now at least the stand is set up back there.
I was able to check my cameras this week and wouldn't you know it, just like clockwork, Pencil showed up! The downside is that every picture of him was foggy. It's my own dumb fault. I checked my camera on the 23rd (in the rain) and had no significant pictures. Well, as I was checking it, I did a few things that took a couple minutes and I'm sure I must've gotten some moisture in the camera. I closed the lid and left. Sure enough, on the 27th at 9 in the morning, here came Pencil, tearing up the place with rubs and scrapes. Not only did he make one pass by the camera, he made 4! Once again at about 4:30pm, again just after dark, and finally at 9pm. That would explain the 10 new scrapes and 8 new rubs I found on that logging road. Even in the foggy pictures it looks like something is up with his right side. It's either underdeveloped or he's already broken some stuff. Probably the latter.

There have been times where I've contemplated doubling up the camera coverage on that spot for just that week. Next year I will. That way if you only get one encounter, you can at least get two angles of the buck. I'm not sure if he'll cruise through there again because the day after he was in there, some guys set up a ground blind right where my camera was. They actually moved my camera two trees over. I can't believe it. I was in there the day after and moved it across the trail to where I had it set up last year. If they do walk that logging road again, they'll walk 10 feet from my camera and have to walk about 10 feet from the ground blind. Very unlikely. I guess I'll find out friday.
The other cameras didn't offer much incentive. I picked up on one 8 point up in the swamp that looked to be two years old, maybe three and a few yearlings.

On the top of the hill I got a couple young bucks too. I moved that camera down to the east side of John's farm to hopefully get a rutted up picture of Pencil, PegLeg, or even BlackNose.
Zach set up his camera near their cabin and picked up a picture of this 3 year old 10 point that we don't have much of a name for.

He's got some great potential. I hope he sticks around. He'd be great for Steph. I cleared out the last downed trees east of my permanent stand and set a camera out over the scrape that has been opened up just south of there. Maybe we'll pick up on Pencil and this nice 10.
At this point, the mystery deer remain to be Bullwinkle, Chippy, and the whereabouts of the 6x5. Time will tell. I can imagine that soon after season, I'll relax my cameras and set them up on older travel routes and pinch points in hopes of seeing some of these older bucks. Food will be king once again come the first week of December. Snowfall will dictate some of that movement.