2018 Hunting Season Update 7 – The Joy of Watching Deer!

I rarely have the opportunity to sit and observe deer. Since I hunt mostly wooded areas, the majority of the deer I see are passing quickly by me. They are either en route to some unknown destination, or someone scared them (me). It’s not very often I just get to enjoy their company for a little while.

Saturday morning, I caught movement in the brush behind me. Even though it took me a few minutes to find the animal that moved, I knew it was a deer. I was also 100 percent confident it was a buck, but that didn’t turn out to be true. Next time.

It was a doe, very slowly milling around and browsing on some small saplings. There was no buck with her, but boy did I imagine one emerging from the brush behind her. He never showed. Eventually, two other deer appeared, each one of them giving me a slight heart attack at their arrival. One was a doe and the other a fawn. Neither one carried a legal set of antlers with them. The jerks. I’m thinking about painting a set of antlers on my rifle scope so I can remember what they look like on a deer.

All three of the deer maintained a very slow pace. They ended up wandering right in front of my trail camera and spending some time there. The fawn even bedded down. Meanwhile, I was taking some poor cell phone video from my stand. It’s fun to see them from different angles. They sure are pretty in the snow, and it’s a lot of fun to watch them.

View from my morning stand:

[hana-code-insert name=’Deer Feeding in the Snow’ /]

View from the trail camera:

[hana-code-insert name=’Doe and Bedded Fawn’ /]

I set this camera up on a scrape that I’d discovered a week before hoping to catch the big fella that made it. Well, I caught the fella. He’s not the monster I’d hoped for, but I’d still put my tag around him. My camera had slipped at some point, so you can’t see his antlers too well until he starts pawing the ground at the end of the video. It looks like a little basket racked seven or eight point. Maybe he’ll show up in the daylight at some point. Then again, maybe he has when I haven’t been there. You’d think he would with some does hanging around.

[hana-code-insert name=’Vermont Buck Making Scrape’ /]

So far, I’ve only logged about 15 hours in the Vermont woods during the 2018 Rifle Season. Bow season wasn’t much more. That’s not typically going to get it done, but I go when I can. Hopefully, I can get out one or two more times and get a crack at Mr. Big.

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