Out Like a Lamb?

 We arrived at the farm on Saturday and, almost immediately, the 39 degree rain started to fall.  It poured all afternoon and then turned to snow.  Here's Sydney out for a pee at dinnertime and starting to be covered in snow.

 This is what we woke up to on Sunday morning.  March 30.  Out like a lamb - ha!

 So, I went out for a walk and followed the deer tracks.

 The sun came out but it was still snow covered in the woods.

 At some point, I'm going to need to spend some time clearing downed trees from the atv trails.

 This was interesting.  By about noon I was down in the clearing by the valley stand.  This is the view up the hillside toward the ladder stand.

 And this is what I saw when I turned 180 degrees and looked up the hillside behind the stand.  The south facing hills were already clear.  The north facing hills were still snow covered.

 So, I went to do some shooting.  I stopped on the way out to buy some turkey loads.  $25 for 10 shells.

 Maybe they're worth it.  This is the pattern from 35 yards.  That should work.

 I'm working on my plains game targets.  Shooting this target from 78 yards is supposed to be the same as real life from 200 yards.  I set up about 80 yards shooting off sticks, standing.

 I put a bullseye (after the fact) on where I was aiming at this impala.

 The back side of the target says that I probably had 10 fatal shots and 5 misses.  Not great.  No shots were really where I was aiming.  Not sure how I'm going to improve on this - I'll just keep practicing.

 I tried 5 offhand shots from 60 yards.  Four hit paper - one is missing.  Two of them were ok.  I hope that I don't have to shoot offhand.

 At one point, I found a doe standing in the field.  Picture taken with Iphone at about 100 yards.

 White tail departing.

Later, it got up to 50 degrees and Joan came out for a tour.  She brought her new Nikon to practice taking pictures for Africa.  Two deer cooperated.

 Joan took these shots from the barn porch (200 yards +).  Her camera does a little better than my Iphone.

 The sky did clear and most of the snow melted.

 Last week I put out one bag of deer feed on this stump.

 When I returned this week, the stump was clean and the camera had 780 photos on it.

 It took them 3 hours to find the food after I put it out.

 They hit it day and night.

 Day 2

 2nd night.

 It snowed on day 3.

 Night 3

 Day 4

 Looks like a large bodied buck facing off with the birds.

 Six deer in daylight over one little pile of food.

 Night 4

 Day 5 - picked clean and visited by groundhog.

 Even a fox checked it out.

 I moved a camera from the hi-rise stand to this new spot near the driveway.  There were deer tracks in the snow here.

 They are losing their winter coats.  Clumps of hair can be found out in the field.

 Last week I mowed the soybean straw in the orchard field.

 possum

 Some random deer photos.

Various photos of Tom.