I went down to the farm on Saturday the 12th and was able to check my trail camera and also replenish the attractants in front of it. Just like last year I moved my camera into the pine trees, an area of overgrown firs and spruce that really holds deer during the winter months, especially if it snows. Like last year I used an attractant in front of the camera, not only to get them to stop but to keep them coming and hopefully keep them coming all year. I moved the camera on New Years and when I went to buy some attractants they didn't have what I wanted so I tried some new ones. One was an apple flavored mineral mix and the other was accorn. I put them in seperate piles just so I could see how each did. It was amazing every video of deer, rabbits, raccon, and even the farm cat has them eating the accorn mix or at least checking it out. There are a couple of videos where the deer will check the apple mix but hardly touch it. The accorn mix was gone when I got there Saturday. I had over 150 videos in 2 weeks. So I had another new product this time its a block of the mix I really like but formed into a cube so we will see how that does.
Anyway, out of all those videos I got one with a buck that was still holding his antlers. The rest were does, button bucks and a couple of deer that had dropped already. A pretty cool side note here there were a group of triplets born last spring that hung around all summer giving all of us some pretty cool encounters because they would just show up during the middle of the day a lot and they liked to visit the corn maze. The kids saw them quite a bit while playing around. Anyway, I think they are all still alive and hanging around there again because I have video of 3 button bucks all together numorous times. Wouldn't that be something if each of the triplets were bucks?
Here is a link to the video of the button bucks
http://s863.beta.photobucket.com/user/chad182nd/media/WGI_0044-1_zps727fee1a.mp4.html
Now on to the good stuff. The deer with antlers was a very nice suprise. It was a deer I call "the wide 9" simply because he is wide and he has 9pts. Original I know. Well I had video of him back in August in velvet, then he showed up in Oct and then again this Jan. So he has not been real regular as far as sightings and trail camera pictures go but he does keep coming back. So there is some promise there.
Here is a link to the video I got of him in October. When I saw this video I really got excited because you can see he was a very big bodied deer and his rack was pretty awesome too.
http://s863.beta.photobucket.com/user/chad182nd/media/WGI_0009_zpsa866eaf6.mp4.html
And here is a link to the video I just got of him. You can see he busted off his G3 on his left side from fighting and the g4 on his left side, even though its tiny, is why I call him a 9pt. This is a great video of him because he is so close to the camera and you can really get a good idea of his rack. I pegged him as a 3 year old this year and I hope I get to see what he becomes next year as a 4 year old.
http://s863.beta.photobucket.com/user/chad182nd/media/WGI_0141_zps2146e7f7.mp4.html
Hopefully he starts to come back to this site with the attractants I am putting out and I can get him to bed nearby and hopefully lose his sheds nearby.
Here is a funny side story. Myself, my father in law and two brother in laws went rabbit hunting the day after I moved my camera. And the pine trees hold a ton of rabbits, especially when it snows, sound familar? So I walked by my camera and figured I might as well check it. While I was checking it, it starting recording and my father in law kicked up a rabbit. You can see on the video below I hear him yell and shoot three times missing all three shots. It was pretty funny that i got that on camera though.
http://s863.beta.photobucket.com/user/chad182nd/media/WGI_0005_zps2e4405c7.mp4.html
