Yesterday me and my dad decided to go for a walk in this pasture that always holds a large number of wintering deer. I had my doubts about whether the deer would be there this year because of the lack of snow and cold weather. My plan wasn't to look for sheds yet since I don't expect them to start dropping here for atleast 2 months yet. Instead it was going to be more of a scouting trip and I was hoping to see a few deer and maybe get some pictures.
At 12:00 the sky was completely clear, making for a great day for picture taking. By 12:08, clouds and fog had rolled in and visibility was down to less than 200 yards. After a mile of walking these few does were the only deer we had seen:
At this point the fog cleared for a minute and I spotted a couple of decent looking bucks about 500 yards away. The visibility dropped again so we decided to make a sneek on them hoping to get close enough for some pictures if the fog lifted again.
As we arrived at the brush where the bucks had been, the clouds started clearning away some and the fog lifted completely. From where we were standing, all we could see was deer everywhere stretching as far as we could see. As I started scanning the herd with my spotting scope it looked like every other deer was a buck. I started snapping pictures immediatley. The conditions still were not great for pictures so the quality isn't great but some bucks are visible in these pictures:
Full digital zoom of a couple of younger bucks:
A decent sized buck that was too far away for a good picture:
Another decent buck, he's wide but not much for height:
Unfortunatley the large majority of the herd was too far away for pictures or hidden behind brush so I have no pictures of the bigger bucks in the herd. In total the herd is probably around 200-300 deer, including maybe 40-50 bucks.
After watching the herd for an hour or so, we decided to leave them be and started hiking back to the truck. Although we tried not to disturb them, we ran into a few does who spooked and alerted the rest of the herd to our presence. Here's a picture of approx. 1/3-1/2 of the herd after the does alerted them:
I plan on heading back next weekend and hopefully the weather cooperates a bit more and i'll be able to get some pictures of a few of the larger bucks including one buck that I caught a glimpse of as we were leaving that should go 180"-190".
Winter deer herd
