Tag: Deer

It’s Almost Time

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It’s almost time, and I couldn’t be more excited.  Pennsylvania’s archery season is less than a month away. And, we have the most deer, the most bucks, and the biggest bucks of any year I can remember.  Most years, if I’m lucky, I have one three year old eight point to target.  This year I have at least three legal bucks on the property, and two that could qualify as the biggest buck I’ve taken on this property.  We’ve really upped our buck-to-doe ratio, and even have a great bullpen for next year.  If it sound like I’m excited, you’re right. The only downside is that I’m still recovering from shoulder surgery a couple of months ago, and I’m just

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A Hard Day

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Yesterday was a tough day for me.  I’ve been hunting hard all through the archery season, and have passed on lots of does and a few small bucks.  Having seen more deer on the property, and a higher buck /doe ratio than I have ever seen on this farm, I was excited for the start of rifle season.  And then . . . disaster.  Shortly after first light I heard a deer coming in from behind me.  Watching and waiting I saw a medium sized eight point come in from about 80 yards.  He was probably a 3 1/2 year old with a mid-sized rack, but a pretty big body for his age.  This is a deer I might have passed

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Deer B Gone

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The deer and rabbits are playing havoc with my perennials and fruit trees.  They’ve chewed the branch tips off of my apple tree, decimated my azaleas, and are generally ticking me off.  And since I’m limited by both geography and the calendar on the, um, methods I can employ to combat these fuzzy marauders, I have to resort to less-than-lethal deterrents. So off to the big-box hardware store I go, only to discover that commercial repellents cost about $27 per gallon!  Wow, there must be some potent ingredients to justify that price.  I must learn more.  What are the active ingredients; let’s see. Hmmm, the first one is putrescent egg solids.  Wait, I’m paying $27/gallon for rotten eggs?!?  Maybe there’s

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October Update

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Wow, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted.  No, we’re not closing up shop.  Just running into the same thing we run into every September/October.  This is our BUSY season.  This time of year we’re busy closing up the garden, hunting, finishing up year-end lawn work, etc.  And this year has been even more hectic than most due to the Mother Earth News Fair, some issues we had with some trees (more on that later), and the fact that we’re still trying to get our home ready for sale. Anyway, we do have some videos almost ready to post; our first experiment in making mead, one on the “tree challenge” I mentioned earlier, and a few others we have up our

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The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

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As many of you know, I’ve been hunting fairly hard this year.  Despite several full-day and half-day hunts, I am still without fresh venison in the freezer.  A few days ago, while driving through our semi-suburban neighborhood I saw a fine looking eight point buck feeding with a doe in a small field.  I jokingly told my daughters to keep an eye out for him. Warning, this post goes into fairly explicit detail about the realities of hunting wild game, and may be too much for children. Please do not read further unless you have made a considered decision about the appropriateness of this content for young readers. Thanks. Here’s where it gets weird. I came downstairs after work on

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Where’s the Venison?

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I pulled the card on my game cam last week.  I was very excited to see that I had almost 1,300 pictures on the card.  That is, I was very excited, until I looked at the pictures.  Oh I had a lot of game.  Does, does with fawns, turkeys, raccoons, opossums, skunks, squirrels, even a woodpecker.  But in all of those pictures there was nary an antler to be found.  Sure, I have my doe tag, and I actually prefer a doe for the freezer.  But I am concerned that I’m staring down the barrel of a one-deer season. This does not bode well.  So, I moved the camera to another area of the property, between a bedding area and

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