Deer hunting report

I spent five hours in a hunting blind with my fishing buddy "Shotgun".

We saw two deer as we walked in. They were bedded down and we spooked them. No quality shots there. Hitting the west end of an east-bound deer is not good.

Over the next five hours we saw two more small ones. The first offered a high quality shot which I passed up. The second did not offer a high quality shot.

Then, at very last light, we saw four more. Shotgun saw one first. "Its a small one" he said.

I put a scope on it and it did not look that small to me but it is hard to tell when there is just one deer and nothing to compare it to. Then three more popped out of the woodwork and the one I had scoped did not seem that small but she was walking away from me. In this case I would have been shooting the north end of a southbound deer.

It is "antlerless only" season in Michigan and you have to take a good look at them to ensure they don't have head-gear.

"Scoping" an animal while hunting is generally considered bad practice. You are supposed to use binoculars. However, I had already confirmed that it was a deer and I was using the magnification to determine if it was a shootable deer. 

The advice about not using the scope mounted on your firearm primarily applies to bushes that are shaking and you are attempting to ascertain what manner of critter is making the bush shake or when you see "blobs" and use your scope to get more resolution. If you are using your scope for that purpose then you are also pointing your weapon toward the shaking bush or the as-yet-unidentified blob...a bush that very well might be obscuring a human moving through the brush or a blog that might be your brother-in-law taking a dump.

No triggers were pulled today.

Cold water

I depleted Shotgun's supply of water to flush the toilets after we got back to the camp. I got to wade out into the lake and scoop up a couple of buckets of water. One thing about having cold feet is that you hustle to get back to a heated space. Even humping two, five gallon buckets of water I handily beat Shotgun back to the door. 

Predation of turkey populations

Shotgun was lamenting the decline in the local turkey population.

I suggested that it might be due to the fact that very few people trap any more.

I recall some research funded by Ducks Unlimited that investigated nesting success. They found that nests close to duck-blinds were far more likely to be raided by opportunistic predators like raccoons, skunks and possums. The premise was that duck-blinds were optimum shelters for that class of animal. Remove the shelters and the opportunist sheltered elsewhere.

Between the lack of trapping knocking back the population and the proliferation of deer blinds, turkeys and other ground-nesting birds have a tough row to hoe.

Turkey and pheasants lay large clutches of eggs and have the potential to rebound rapidly (i.e. a couple of years) IF the eggs don't get eaten before they hatch.

A third secular shift that hurt pheasant is the way local farmers treat corn stubble. Some chisel-plow in the fall which buries most of the grain and reduces the wind-break effect of the stubble. There also seems to be a tendency to cut the corn lower when harvesting. That also reduces the "cover" offered by a field of harvested corn with respect to avian predators and weather.

Any opinions?

Moral equivalence

I wonder why some folks think it is morally superior to eat 400,000 meal worms instead of one deer?

Is it because the deer has eyes and you can identify with it?

If so, aren't you guilty of a moral failure because you could not look at another life-form and think "Except for the grace of God it could have been me"?

Trail cams

I am having a lot of fun with one of my trail cams. Last night I captured pictures of many rabbits and one possum.

Tonight I have it pointed beneath a persimmon tree. I expect a big party.

Seeds delivered

I had a package show up from a friend in Kentucky. It is a care-package and undoubtedly a treasure-trove of seed-nuts.

I will open it tomorrow.

Fruitcake: The hidden menace