Last Week of Deer Camp

A beautiful blanket of snow covered the ground again this year for the last week of deer camp. One thing about snow, is that it allows us to see the tracks that deer leave behind. There's a lot of debate going on about the size of the deer herd in the Northern Tier. However, the amount of tracks we saw during the last week prove that there are still deer around. While the herd is not the size that it was back in the 1970's, something else has changed too. Snow on the ground also reveals the number of hunters who have walked through. It is very safe to say that there are far more deer in the woods these days than hunters. The four of us basically had the entire township to ourselves for the last few days of hunting season. While this provides for a real rustic hunting experience, it makes it even harder to find the deer. All in all, we did pretty well for a couple of guys. We did see a few deer, including one nice buck, a coyote, and some big gobblers who managed to escape us during turkey season. I took this picture of a gobbler from my tree stand on the last day of the season. The buck managed to give us the slip and will live on to be an even larger buck next year. Although we came home without any deer again this year, we enjoyed the time spent together in the woods. The memories we share will last much longer than the amount of venison we have in our freezers.