Has The Rut Peaked?

 So Blogger has done it again.  This is the reverse order from what I selected for the photos. What are they doing?

This is the only time that I have seen this buck.  He must be out cruising the singles bars looking for a hookup.  He's got a lot of junk going on in that rack.

Most of the usual suspects showed up in the night photos.

But there was still quite a bit of daylight buck activity this week. First, the uni-horn.

It was youth gun weekend - At one point the neighborhood sounded like the Seal Team was going in after Osama Bin Laden.

Does this crow have an acorn?

I saw one doe on the edge of a treeline for a couple minutes.  That was it.  And the weather was pretty good - cool and relatively calm ahead of a front.

Lots of sign from the bucks as usual.

I did get zero confirmed on the weapons for gun week - 45-70 and muzzleloader.

And then it started to rain and rain.  And, a mouse seems to have chewed the drain hose to the dishwasher - we had quite a flood.

On The Move Now!

I had an evening in stand on Saturday and saw 3 bucks on the move.  A storm front came thru overnight and brought 25 mph winds and rain.  I didn't even go out Sunday morning.  This one-sided buck was the first one out in the evening.  This is a trailcam of him (ignore the date stamp - this camera doesn't keep time).

He came strolling thru the field at about 5:15.

Shortly after he passed thru, I started hearing some grunting and moaning.  Then deer running.  Eventually I saw the source - a decent buck in hot amorous pursuit of a doe.  Here's a short video of him on the chase.  Buck Chasing  And after those two crossed the field and headed into the woods for some privacy, this third buck showed up.

Definitely more action than last week.  And there is a ton of sign around everywhere.

I discovered a sink hole in my driveway on Sunday morning.  It wasn't there the day before.

It was about 4' deep.  I put two full tractor bucket loads of gravel in there and it was still low.  I'm not sure what's going on - it's about 25' away from a culvert under the driveway.

This week I got a couple photos from the camp staff of the hunters on our Thorofare elk hunt.  If you haven't read about that trip, you can find it here. Thorofare Elk Hunt

These two shots were on the final morning as we were saddling up for the ride back out to civilization.

Meanwhile, I was doing the camera tour back in Ohio.

Definitely more daylight activity this week than is typical.

Pretty sure the buck below was the third one out on Saturday.

And, a few of the typical varmints.