Sunday, July 24, 2011

Some new trail camera pictures

Well I didn't get any really big ones this time but some really cool pictures and some nice looking bucks.





















































































































































































































Sunday, July 17, 2011

Some really cool trail camera photos

I got an opportunity to check my camera this past thursday evening and man was I happy to see what was on it. I had about 90 pictures and 80 of them were of bucks. A few small bucks but a few really good looking deer, especially considering its July.
However, what I am most excited about is I can show you all a deer I have named "Peeping Tom." This is a buck that Julie and I saw 3x in 2 days last January when we were down on the farm house sitting and baby sitting. It was when we had 2 feet of snow on the ground and it was getting down to -10 degrees at night. The food was scarce and the deer were coming up to the house to eat the landscape. Julie woke me up at 3 am to tell me some deer were outside, we did not expect to be able to see "Peeping Tom" and "Sanctuary" only 10 feet outside the windows. It was an experience we won't soon forget. Fast forward to this past spring and the farmer who farms Barry's property road over this deers shed and punctured his tire.
So anyway, take a look at some of the better pictures below and you won't have any problem telling which one is Peeping Tom. He is a wide 10 point for sure, thats what he sported last year and if you look close you can see he has started his G3's already. When I looked at the shed the farmer road over I could see he might grow g4's this year making him a 12pt. Even if he doesnt he is one heck of a big deer for around there.


This one looks to have pretty good mass at his bases.


Hard to tell on this one but he looks pretty good to.




I got quite a few pictures of this guy and I want to get some more because it looks like there is a lot of mass at his base so I am curious what happens with him.




Same thing with this guy. He seems to have a really good start. I would say an 8pt for sure.







The next two are the same deer. I only have profile pictures of this one but he looks pretty good to.



Nice looking picture here. Not to shabby buck either.


This is a really nice looking deer. It looks like he has a way to go too.






Well hi there. Both of these guys have a good start. Really exciting to see two like this.


This is a bad picture but I am pretty sure this is a deer I call Santcuary.




Here is Peeping Tom. If this doesnt get your blood flowing I don't know what would. I actually got about 7 pictures of him and he gave me a all good angles, I hope he stays around and if he does I have a really good idea where he will be.



This shows his width. Notice how much longer his right brow tine is.


This is the angle that you can really see what is going on. I would say his g2's are done and g3's are just started (especially on his left side) and there is pretty good mass at the ends yet which I believe will be his g4's. Making him a 12pt.

So now you can see why I/we are pretty geeked for this year. I will give the camera a couple weeks and see what happens but this is a really good start.































Tuesday, July 12, 2011

My "Hail Mary" Stand/Plan

I think this is going to be my outside the box year as far as what plans I have in place for this coming hunting season. I hung a new stand a couple saturdays ago on a tree line that I have hunted before but not in this spot. When I hunted it before I was farther to the east and really never had a deer close enough to shoot at. I am calling it a Hail Mary because it really is in a spot I feel is either going to be awesome or stink.





My theory is this. Last year there was a small tornado that hit here. Although it was rated F0 it did some pretty significant damage to the neighbors house and camper trailer. Their fifth wheel camper ended up on their house. It also knocked down about a 50-75 yard swath of trees in this tree line. (yellow circle on the ariel below) What I believe has happened is a buck is using these trees to bed in. They are still laying down, the farmer to the south had pushed them off of his property but they are still lying all over the place. Its made for some pretty good cover in my book. So if this holds true I think I have a good set up to catch a buck moving in and out of this area. The green dotted lins are travel routes that I know deer use. So regardless if a buck is in that area it might still be a good stand. What you can't really see on the picture is the fence that goes around the neighbors property, it goes east to where the green dotted line crosses the green field on the ariel. This fence causes the deer to go around it and thus makes a pretty good pinch point at the SE corner of the fence just to the left of where my stand is.


The area to the north outlined in Red is the sanctuary and I know that the heaviest area of travel is from the SE corner of the Sanctuary down across corn field and then across the driveway to this fence line. In fact I found the shed to the buck i named "sanctuary" on this fence line. So this might give me a chance to go after him or "peeping tom" with a north, northwest, or west wind(blue arrows) which I cant hunt in the tripod next to the sanctuary.



I am going to leave my camera over the mineral block for the rest of July and maybe into August, however once it gets late in August I am going to move it to this fence line. I will probably put it near the driveway for a week or two. See I see anybody going through there and what time they are, then I will put it to the east of the stand on the tree line, probably facing the corn field to the south and see if anybody is moving through there. This will give me a great idea of whats going on without getting in to close to this area.



When I first started hunting here I would see a really nice buck in this spot quite a bit when leaving at dark after hunting. So I know it has held them before and I have a hunch it will again this year. We will see.













June Trail Camera Pictures

Well it is that time of year again. Actually I had my camera out early June already. With the lifting of the baiting ban it will be cool to have a mineral block out and see who shows up. I have already had some good signs as you can see below. One word of advice I can give is if you put a camera out make sure you account for the fact that not everything has grown up yet. When I put my camera out in early june a lot of the weeds and trees were not fully grown yet. You will notice the branch in the screen. It got leaves and dropped into the view of my camera so I got about 150 pictures of it whenever the wind blew it. So when I checked the card last Jacob and I did some major clearing of the tall weeds and that branch. So the July pictures should be much better. July and August are the big months for antler growth so the next couple posts should be much better pictures.


However, I was able to get about 60 pictures of deer though in June which is much better than I normally do. As you can see below some of them are really starting to grow already. Its hard for me to tell now if any of these are any of the bucks I am looking for, namely "peeping tom" and "sanctuary" but the one in the first, second, and last pictures seems to be a really nice size bodied deer. The bases of the antlers just don't seem that big so I don't think its either of them. Like I said earlier its really hard for me to tell at this stage who is who. Hopefully, in a couple weeks I will have some pictures of one or both of those deer.





Anyway, I posted some of the better pictures below.