I checked my camera where I had gotten pictures of HighRise back in September and was lucky enough to snag him again. I checked the camera on the 3rd (Wednesday), and the batteries were dead - just my luck. After scrolling through the photos, it looked like HighRise came in at about 10:40pm, left and came back around 3 am and once more around 6 am. Then the batteries died. I did the trick of just pulling the batteries out and putting them back in, knowing I was completely out of batteries at home. Sure enough they had just a bit of juice left, so I left planning to come right back with some fresh batteries. Since this was a Wednesday, I was super busy with church activities so I never went back out there. We went to the corn maze and it began to rain. The forecast was very dreary with a chance of snow for over 24 hours. I wanted to get back out there before the snow got too bad, but I just couldn't. 10" of snow later, the batteries were still dead and I was just wondering how many opportunities I was missing at harvesting HighRise. It finally worked out to hunt that stand yesterday morning (8th) and so I found some batteries lying around the house and went out for a morning hunt with a good 5" of snow remaining. I had three grouse roosting and feeding in some willows about 25 yards away for quite a while, but I saw zero deer. I got down prematurely to check the camera and pop in new batteries. Sure enough, the same day I was last there, HighRise came right back in after I left. He was there midday, and about an hour or more before dark. The time is off by a couple hours from when I switched the batteries. I was in there around 11am and I figured he came in around noon and then again around 5:30 or 6pm.
This is super encouraging for a few reasons: 1) he's spent more than 5 hours there at a time. 2) He's not afraid to be moving during daylight. 3) He obviously smelled me in there at the same time. So he should be fairly comfortable. As I was climbing down yesterday morning, it began to rain. Harder and harder. It rained for more than half of the day which really wiped a lot of the snow away. So here we are, October 9th on the tail end of a major cold front. Deer should really be moving if they weren't already. HighRise was feeding hard on the front end of the storm and I anticipate he'll do the same on the tail end. The next south wind is Friday. So that's my day. That's the day that HighRise will fall. I am so pumped.
The hunt before that was on Saturday night (6th) with Zach. We hung a new set north of the softball diamond in two big jackpines. We saw 4 deer. A doe, a yearling, and two fawns jog across the open field headed down to the soybeans. This will be another good set for the pre-rut (October 28-November 5). The deer were really out of there element with this amount of snow this early. They were pretty determined to get from A to B.
I'm waiting to check some of the cameras that I've put out until the snow leaves completely. I don't really want to advertise where I'm doing my scouting from. Another couple days with warmer temperatures will help.
It's crazy to think that we're already entering the time frame where I've been getting good pictures of mature bucks. Two weeks to the day when The Clown was on his feet. Two weeks since Skyscraper's excursion, etc, etc. I need to get my cameras back onto major travel corridors and a couple on scrapes. Here we go, the rut will be here before you know it. One lunar cycle away!
No comments:
Post a Comment