The Water Trough, August 27, 2011

On Tuesday afternoon, the 22nd, celebrating the arrival of a new camera, around 5:00 PM I walked outside our front door and looked toward the water trough.  It’s only a little over 200 yards from our house and running up to the water was a roadrunner, fumbling around with the new camera, I finally got this “shot” of the bird.

No more action with my new camera, but during the afternoon of the 24th, I replaced the memory card and reaimed the game cam and when I displayed the card, on the 22nd at 5:20 PM, 7 deer came up to get water.  Then on the evening of the 23rd, 3 spikes, all in a row, came running toward the water
    
So by the afternoon of the 23rd I had become quite familiar with my new camera and was rewarded with some fine pictures, even in our extreme drought conditions, of some great deer!  Hoping to almost synchronize some camera “shots” with some game camera “shots”, it didn’t work out, because the big bucks were watering at the far end of the trough and the game cam wasn’t aimed at that end.  This situation was corrected with the card replacement on the 24th.

Here is my new camera “shot” of 2 good, 8 pointers and notice how much bigger the big 8 is than the other buck and on the other “shot” when the flash went off, the little one looked up.  This is the “shot” I was hoping to synchronize, but my game cam was aimed wrong.
     
With the big 8 posing, another young one walked up, not fazing the big ‘un.

But a short time earlier on the afternoon of the 23rd, these other deer, 3 bucks, one a good 6, a doe and a spotted fawn, came to water.  This “shot” shows how one end of the trough was masked from the game cam.

It’s pretty obvious that right at dark on Tuesday afternoon, the bucks were really out!