Deer On The Hoof
 

Here are some photos of deer on my property from the fall of '23. They were taken during late Oct and early Nov with a Canon digital. These were all taken after I had already shot a nice eight point on Oct 10th. The tall seven point had cornered a doe in my lawn and I took his photos from the house while he was in the driveway. The smaller eight was also in the yard on a different day. I also have trail camera pictures and videos of at least four other nice eight points, at least two of which were taken by neighbors during the firearms seasons. I obviously have no issue with PA antler restrictions. Enjoy.

That big seven is a great looking deer

Do you hunt on your homestead property? Good bucks for next year

-Jake

Yes I do. I only have 91 acres so not much control over what happens to the local deer herd. I just happen to have some good travel lanes between river bottom bedding and ridgetop ag fields. Some of the neighbors lease their fields to a local farmer and he has yet to harvest corn that was planted last summer. Crazy but good for the local wildlife. Lots of both red and white oak acorns last fall as well.

That big seven doesn't look quite as impressive from the side. His rack is not very deep at all and looks like a big fork horn from the side. I haven't seen any trail cam photos of him since about the middle of the regular firearms season but I also never heard of anyone getting him either. He was pretty nocturnal by that time.

The wide eight is one of the bucks that I know for sure survived all of the recent hunting seasons. I've been watching him for at least two years. The last photos I have of him with his antlers were taken on the night of 2/6/24 when he followed two does across my gas well road.

Sounds like you've got a pretty nice little slice to enjoy there.

How's your turkeypopulation?

My local flocks seem to have disappeared



- Jake

Yeah, the turkeys are definitely down from where they were even a couple of years ago. Although I did see a flock of eleven birds near the house a few days ago and that included two jakes. I've also heard that a local camp has been seeing a flock of about thirty near their property but at this time of year that probably includes almost every bird within a ten mile radius.

Speaking of turkeys, I was totally shocked by the number of gobblers I heard this morning. I went out on the back porch right at daylight and heard at least four different birds, three of which I'm pretty sure were on my property. That's a total 180 from just a couple of days ago when I only thought I might have heard a couple of gobbles from no closer than a half mile away. The crazy thing is that it was probably 20° warmer that day than it was this morning. What I assume to be a dominant bird gobbled steadily for at least 30 minutes and on the point of a ridge where I have taken several birds in recent years. The rest of the nearby birds only gobbled once or twice and then shut up. One of those was within a couple hundred yards of the house. With the season still a month and a half away a lot can change before then but I feel way more optimistic now than I did even a few days ago.

Good, hope you're able to get on one of them!

Which camera do you have?

All of those photos were taken with a relatively inexpensive little digital Canon Elph except for the one trail cam photo after dark and that was from a Spypoint Force-Pro-S.