This just in!!! After almost 5 months of complete mystery, the 6x5 showed up 5.5 miles north of where I was getting pictures of him this summer. I can't believe where he showed his face - right in the cedars!
It's either part of his excursion, or he's looking for cover from the cold temps we've been having this week. I'll come back to this.
So I sat on the 20th overlooking the spring again. I saw absolutely nothing until right at last light. I had a deer sneak up behind me and come right under my tree again. I've finally figured out that this is not a coincidence. These deer are trying to use this trail, but they're getting my scent from either where I walked in or from me directly. I'm trying for a south wind, but apparently, these deer want to come in from the north, so it's backwards. I know I need to switch trees now for sure. I need a west to a southwest wind and I need to be more to the east of the spring so the deer that keep coming underneath me don't get my wind. That should fix the problem. Anyway, the deer that I saw was either a female fawn or a doe. There was a bigger deer behind it (I could tell by the stomping that ensued), but I could never get a look. So it was either a doe and a fawn or a buck with a doe. Probably the former.
On the day after Thanksgiving, I went out with Joe and we hunted a place he had a hunch about. We didn't really have an ideal wind to sit in that spot, but we tried it anyway. It was fun to hunt together and play with all our camera gear. Zero deer.
That leads me to today, the 27th of November. I tried to get out early enough to check a few cameras. I learned some things again (like I typically do every time I'm out). I pulled both cameras off of John's farm country and put one back on his farmyard. The one in the cedars north of the road had dead batteries. I did get a picture of the same two year old that visited the scrape out by the corn plot from the week before.
I moved a few cameras along the road into the woods to the north in hopes of getting some of these bucks heading out to feed in the fields. After that, I took the wheeler out and checked the shack field camera and then moved on to the camera we set east of dads stand. The shack field had 28 or so photos and the camera to the east had 65 some photos. With the fourwheeler still running, I reviewed the images. I had no plans of hunting around that area that evening so I wasn't concerned with spooking any deer. I flipped through and said to myself, "two year old, two year old, yearling, yearling...".
And then I hit the 25th and got another picture of The King (as I'm calling him). Second guessing that name now. I thought it was a really cool picture.
As I continued to scroll and noticed the date approaching the 27th, I figured that'd be about it. WRONG! The last picture taken was taken only 1 hour and 45 minutes before I got there and it was a giant!
At first, I thought, "Is that blacknose?" As I zoomed in, the dozens of trail camera pictures flashed through my head until I locked in on a buck - THE 6x5! There was no way, I thought, that he would be up here. This camera was 5.45 miles away from where I was getting pictures of him in June and once in July. As I stared at the point and shoot camera, I immediately shut the fourwheeler off. Not like that did anything. It's funny how one picture can change the focus of a whole season. Not only was the buck alive, but he was healthy. The bittersweet reality was also setting in - this was more than likely an excursion and the odds of him coming back through this way were very slim. Regardless, I quickly checked my wildview, which was dead of course, and headed back to the cabin to formulate a plan. The wind wasn't good to sit in my new stand set north of the three corner so I opted to walk past the corner and sit in dad's two man ladder stand. The wind wasn't bad, but it meant I was hoping that the buck bedded up somewhere and would be returning through the same area that evening. Dad's ladder was a good observation stand with good visibility, but I observed nothing. Zero deer, but a lot of hope and wonder. I also am now 90% sure that this buck is NOT Twigs. So that means that Twigs is (or should be) out there still. That also means that this buck isn't for sure a 5 year old. I believe that he is, but there is a small chance he could be just 4. Either way, it looks to me like he would gross in the mid 150s and net somewhere in the high 140s. If these deer have a reasonable winter and spring, this buck could be a booner next year.
My next post will be my 200th. Maybe there will be some blood involved. Hopefully a buck.
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