Putting a game cam near the feeder that is close to the tree stand, I didn’t expect much, just a lot of doe.  When I picked up the game cams and shut them down for now, there were pics of several bucks, a couple of them that had survived the season, were pretty good ones.

First there was a six pointer, a 2-1/2 year old that had picked on a bigger deer and got a couple of his tines broken off.  He kinda’ took over the feeder.  He showed up before midnight on Christmas day and since then has been a regular customer.

Then on January 11th, the motion sensor worked and these good, long horns appeared.  It was a good one, a shooter for this past season          and for next year too!

Thinking the one spike that I saw opening morning had been shot during the past season, all of a sudden, it turned up on the 13th.  We’ll get him next season, but I hope he hasn’t gone nocturnal.

On the 16th a new buck, another survivor, showed up.  It’s a young one, but with another years growth, should be a shooter and have much better horns next year.

Including me, this past season, hunters that I had talked to, within a couple of miles of my ranch, shot 5 nice bucks and I was worried that next season would be a little light on the buck side.  However, seeing the pics from the game cams and with the 1 buck limit our fine State has hung around our necks, I bet that next season will be a good one too!

Within a month, I will place one game cam along a well used trail and see what comes along and the other will be on a feeder, hopefully, checking for turkeys.  Maybe, I “need” one or two more?

Cleaning up some game cam pics from last year, I came across a few unusual ones.

The first is of buck and a doe.  She’s jumping out of the feeder pen, obviously going to chase after the buck!

The second one is of a squirrel climbing to the top of one of the feeder’s fence posts.  He must think there’s some corn on the top, or else it enjoys the scenery from up there.

The third is of the melanistic deer.  It showed up around noon of the 29th with a doe and another yearling.  Then, later that same afternoon it showed up with a doe and 4 other yearling.  Next year it will be much harder to keep her from being shot and, of course, I’ll tell all my hunters not to shoot her, but if she strays to another ranch, that’s another story.
    
Finally, Billy Hill, a new Senior Softball teammate who lives on Lake Travis outside of Austin, sent me this picture of a coyote that on December 16, 2010 was nosing around his backyard feeder.  Yes, the feeder is in his backyard, and yes, Billy hunts and has a hunting lease outside of Richland Springs, 35 miles southeast of Goldthwaite.

But if I had to guess, he doesn’t hunt deer off of this feeder.

In Mills county, Texas, over the Christmas holidays, the bucks were still moving around.  James Crumley sent me this picture of his Son and a ten pointer, with several broken tines, that he bagged on Christmas Eve Afternoon, while still hunting along a beautiful, seasonal draw.  Crumley’s ranch borders mine along County Road 408 and is a real nice place!

Not to be outdone James’ other son, also while still hunting on Christmas Afternoon, bagged this buck that James says, “May be the biggest one shot on his place in a long time!”  This one looks kinda’ funny since it appears not to have any brow tines, but the tines have been broken off right at hide level.  Must have been a big fight!

Talking about big fights, on November 23rd, one of my game cams took this “shot” of another nice buck that has some major damage done to one of his antlers.  Unless later, he also broke off his brow tines, this probably isn’t the big one shot by James’ son.

These bucks have been doing some serious fighting!

The game cam took some unusual “shots” on the 9th and 10th of December.

The first one, on the 9th at 7:17 AM, was this nice buck, checking out 3 doe around the feeder.

Then a minute later, another doe walks up, but the buck isn’t interested in them and walks off.

The most unusual was just at sunup on the 10th, Mickey Donahoo saw this nice, shootable, buck, maybe the one from the day before.   Mickey was well hidden in a tripod stand tucked into the tallest oak tree on the right. That day, see my December 11, 2010 post, “[The Annual Doe Hunt]”, I had told Mickey, that if he saw a good buck, go ahead and shoot it, but he declined this shot, waiting for a nice size, doe.  The leg of the feeder hides the buck’s antlers, but Mickey said he was a nice one!

Then late in the afternoon of the 10th, the melanistic deer that I have several pictures and a video of, shows up around the feeder.

On the evening of December 13th, Mickey shot another doe, completing our “Annual Doe Hunt”.  It makes two for this season and I’ve only seen one spike so now the Grandkids need to get busy on a couple of more doe.

Come to think of it, I haven’t seen the spike in several weeks.  I wonder?

Success finally arrived! Randy guided me through attaching a video to my blog, after I had succeeded Sunday afternoon in posting the video on YouTube. The above video was taken late last week on a camera hunt and shows two yearling deer. The one on the right is the semi-melanistic deer, normal deer markings with the black upsides that happened to show up in another picture, see “[More Outdoors Pictures]”, December 10, 2010.

The yearling on the left apparently has picked up my scent since the wind was blowing directly off of me. Having used a scent blocker, it looks like it kinda’ worked since the little deer finally went to browsing.

This was a great step forward for me in my technical pursuits!

During the rut and on into the season, rubs can be made by aggressive bucks strengthening their neck muscles or just marking out their home territory. A buck’s forehead gland will leave a scent that lets other deer know who made it.

Around here right now, bucks are active and trying to find doe that weren’t bred during the first estrus cycle, so the fresh rubs that I found last Saturday, the 11th, are probably from an aggressive buck, marking out his home territory. My October 15, 2010 post, “[Sign]” showed a lot of preseason activity that has carried on late into this season.

Deep gouges like this usually means a real wall hanger and the big buck that I saw on the 12th certainly fit the bill for aggression!

These rubs were in a roughly, straight line for over 400 yards and not wanting to leave too much human scent around, I didn’t pursue them any farther.

Having already “punched” my buck tag, now, I’m into video. After videoing my hunt Tuesday afternoon, I still don’t know how to post them to my blog, but I’ll find out how to, soon.

On Wednesday afternoon my son, Randy, sent me these pictures he just took in San Marcos of 2 melanistic deer.  The pictures were taken just east of Randy’s house and his neighbor’s car radio ariel shows in the second pic.  The other, larger deer is probably the mother of the two yearlings.  On my September 5, 2010 post, “[More On Melanistic Deer]”, the featured pictures showed a nice melanistic,   buck and, probably, this buck was the sire of the 2 yearlings.  Obviously the genetic trait had been passed on to the next generation.

Randy should contact Dr John Baccus and John Posey, at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas.  These researchers are the world’s leading authorities on melanistic deer and they are right in his hometown.

According to Dr. Baccus and John Posey, some deer are semi-melanistic, meaning they display coloration and markings somewhere between those of normal and melanistic specimens. Semi-melanistic deer have the dark overall coloration of melanistic deer but retain the white areas of normally colored deer.  This yearling in the September 5, post and picture must be semi-melanistic.

The buck pictured is a nice one, too!

Speaking of nice bucks, on December 3, one of my game cameras took this “shot” of a really, nice, almost, super buck and having already “punched my tag”, all I can do is take camera “shots” and wait for next year!

This past Monday, I moved the game camera to along a very well used game trail and the results were surprising. Thanksgiving morning, after picking up Wesley and Paul from their unsuccessful hunt, we stopped by the game cam and changed out the 2 GB memory card and displaying its contents on my PC, we got a couple of neat pictures.

First, at 4:00 AM on the 23rd, the deer, later shown to be an 8 pointer, walks away from the camera.

Then at 7:00 AM on the same day, probably the same deer, with a much better picture of his 8 points, is again walking along the same trail. Earlier in the year the buck must have been injured on his right side, because his left horns are smaller, or else broken off from fighting. This is the first time we’ve seen or photographed this deer. He’s really patrolling this trail, because he must know something we don’t know!

On the 25th a spike comes browsing along. Opening morning, this spike, or his twin, came walking along the same trail and I passed on shooting him, saving it for the grandsons.

Thanksgiving morning, a big norther came blowing in, bring with it heavy clouds, a 20-25 MPH wind and cold temps. The temp at noon was 41 and still dropping, however, this didn’t stop the hunters with Layla, Sean and 7 year old, Will taking to the big blind and seeing a couple of doe and one spike that Sean couldn’t get on quick enough. Paul and Wesley climbed into the tree stand and in the real thick stuff, didn’t see anything. The norther really slowed down the deer movement

My Senior Softball buddy, Ev Sims, has a ranch in Jackson County, Texas, but for some quick afternoon hunts he keeps a small place west of Houston, outside of Hockley. This is part of the Katy Prairie and the location of me missing 3 shots at a greater Canadian goose. See one of my original posts of February 3, 2007, “[Canadensis Maxima]” for the story. This is the same area I hunted for almost 50 years and once it was prime goose and duck hunting, but now, like most of our State, it has a lot of deer. Ev bagged this buck on November 14th.

On November 12 after I shot the big, buck, I moved the game cam to a new spot along a game trail, much closer to the tower blind and just after midnight this bruiser ambled by.

Then later in the morning, after sun up, two 2012 bucks stopped for a picture.

Later the afternoon of the 13th, just before dark, this whopper showed up.

Saturday evening, this 2011/12 buck was heading the other way.

Monday morning found me posted in the tower blind, but with the nice buck “in the bag”, my interest wasn’t there so I decided to go change out the 2mg memory chip in the game cam, but, looking and looking, I couldn’t find it. Finally I did and if anyone would have seen me walking around lost, looking for the camera, they’d thought that I wasn’t all there!

It was interesting that I shot the big, buck early on Friday and all this activity occurred late that evening on into the morning. The wind had laid and the rut was smokin’! In fact, Tuesday night Layla and I were returning from a Goldthwaite, ladies basketball game and one buck, an 8 pointer, that we hadn’t seen before, had two, obviously hot doe, cornered against the fence along the County Road. The buck wouldn’t move, we didn’t push him with the Suburban and we sat for at least 5 minutes. Finally, with the buck standing not 15 feet from the hood, both doe chickened out and high tailed it! Over the fence the buck went and so much for our standoff.

Ev Simms, a Senior Softball buddy, sent me this picture of a coyote he bagged on his ranch in Jackson County, Texas. It’s a nice one!

He waited all day Saturday and Sunday morning in one blind for the big deer they’d seen on their game cams. His son hunted the same blind Sunday afternoon and got this beauty!

On November 2, just before good, light a buck came in to browse on the corn outside of the feeder enclosure. His rack size is undeterminable.

Here’s another “shot” of my melanistic deer.

This “shot” of two doe fighting qualifies as the most unusual one of the year. It was almost topped by the same doe, or another one, in the background of the second picture, fighting with, perhaps, my melanistic deer. It’s either a training session for the yearling, or the doe has picked a fight with an undersized opponent!