Off Line For A Bit

Smile for the Trail Camera

Funny thing about the whitetail deer.  Always playing coy with the trail camera.  They're out there all year long, 24/7 and once and awhile they play all wary and curious about the device.  

I have a hypothesis.  These pictures were all taken immediately following the changing of the SD cards and my scent might have been in the area and certainly on the camera housing.  This is worth paying closer attention to and might call for handling the cameras with gloves.

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Meatball Farming

From the perspective of a couple of trail cameras here's Your's Truly getting a couple of food plots in.

  

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By the way - those plots got in just in-time as and inch and a half of rain has fallen in the past 48 hours.  Good timing!

Trail Camera Experimentation

As I've been experimenting with the 'art' of trail camera photography here's a nice study on lighting...
 

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This picture was taken less than three days ago and I have to say that this doe is still very, very pregnant!  Keep a sharp eye for possible fawn pics before too long!

Das Boot

Time to get the boat wet.

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Batteries charged, fishing tackle inventoried and restocked.

Ready for the water...

Day is Done

Off to a wedding and reception tonight so here's another crappy sunset to grumble about... 

Chief Hoser

This winter the deer camp crew got me a present.  

A Briggs and Stratton power washer.  With electric start.  

I used the power washer a couple of times. Last weekend I found out you can strip paint off of a fence if you're not careful.

Yesterday all my equipment cleaned-up real nice in very short order.

  
I am the Chief Hoser.

Turkey Hunter

Six Deuce hamming it up for a trail camera.

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Took a swing at a turkey and missed.  Always next year...

Meatball Farming

Had a bit of a dry spell the last couple of weeks so I thought I better get a couple of wildlife food plots in before the monsoons arrive in a few days. 

Disced-up a couple of strips. Fertilized the daylights out of them with triple 19.

Broadcast the first plot in turnip, rape, clover and chicory.

The second plot was planted in oil sunflower. It is going to be a giant bird feeder.

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Disced everything again and ran it all smooth with the big tractor tires.

Meatball farming!

Timber Doodle

While Six Deuce was out turkey hunting he had to stretch his legs and answer the call of nature.

He flushed a doodle bird - the North American Woodcock - Scolopax minor.  

Here is the nest.

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Another reason to keep the dogs close so the ground-nesting birds can propagate successfully.

Talking Turkey

My pal, Six Deuce, scored a big goose egg last weekend on his turkey hunt.

Recently introduced to the sport he had rather consistently scored a bird every season he hunted.  This year - not so much.  He returned home empty-handed.  That's why this is called hunting and not shopping.

Braumeister and I have bonus permits for the last season which opens today.  There are gobblers out there.

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Will we succeed in enticing them by crooning the turkey love call?

Stay tuned...

Antler Sprout

Young buck just beginning to grow his first set of decent antlers.

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If you look closely you will note that he's been shedding his gray winter coat and beginning to transition to the beautiful roan coat of summer.

Fawning Season

Fawning season is upon us.  Just about now the does that were bred last year are going to begin dropping (delivering) their new-borns.

This picture was taken a week ago and you can tell by the girth of this doe that she is very, very pregnant.  She may already of given birth by the time this post is published.

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Time to keep the dogs close and a sharp eye out for the spotted youngsters.

Trail Camera

Anyone that visits here knows that I am sort of a critter aficionado.  Aside from the hunting and fishing thingy I just happen to enjoy observing wildlife.  One of the tools I use to keep tabs on the local wildlife is five Moultrie trail cameras.  I had four working cameras and one non-working camera.  A software upgrade brought the crippled camera back to life.
 

Priced at roughly a hundred bucks apiece they’re an inexpensive and inexhaustible source of entertainment.  Scout a game trail, place a camera with a fresh SD card and batteries, go away for a week and come back to swap-out the memory card and check to see who’s been visiting.  These silent sentinels patiently monitor things 24/7 – 365 days a year.  Equipped with a motion-activated shutter they can capture single photos, bursts of as many as five or short video clips.  They also have infrared capability and take black and white photos after dark without a visual flash.  Remarkably, they happen to record reasonably decent quality images without the investment of thousands of dollars in digital camera equipment and thousands of hours of personal time.

Truthfully, the quantity of discarded photos is mind-boggling relative to the retention rate of keepers but digital technology lends itself well to the Law of Large Numbers.

Digital trail cameras have revolutionized both wildlife photography and wildlife monitoring with even the Wisconsin DNR getting in on the game.  Most any outdoor enthusiast I know makes use of at least one of these devices.

This past winter I thought it might be a worthy expansion of this hobby to experiment with these cameras to see if I could raise the bar so-to-speak.   Since a couple of months ago I’ve been switching-up camera locations and techniques with some interesting results.

An example of the ethereal quality that IR lends to a simple black and white photo…

And one of the results of placing a camera a ground level to get a bird’s eye view of what’s happening…

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I’ll keep experimenting with techniques and locations and will share anything worth sharing.  So stay tuned.

Furmination

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Nope.  I am not shearing a sheep.  Or a dog.  The blonde Lab is getting a FURminator® treatment because she's going through a spring molting.

All I have to say is the fur was flying and The Frau had to use a garden rake to clean-up after the job was done.

Here's to fewer hairballs.  Cheers!

You can learn more about the FURminator® here.

State Bird

Meet Turdus migratorius - the American robin - and Wisconsin's state bird.

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Everyone knows this bird by sight and this time of year they are singing-up a storm late into the evening.  The nearly solid black head and dark red breast of the bird on the right identifies it as a male of the species.

Picture taken with a trail camera positioned just above the turf.  A bird's eye view...

Armed and Dangerous

Never leave home with the dogs without your pistolero.

Skunks, coon, possum and porcupine are bad critters.  They predate bird nests and now is the nesting season.

Talking Turkey

My pal, Six Deuce, is turkey hunting this week - Period D.

If the trail cameras are to be believed there are plenty of birds coming and going.

Like these jakes...

And this gobbler...

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Trail Camera Experimentation

In order to put a different perspective on things I've deliberately positioned one of the trail cameras just above the turf at a location known to be an active game trail.

The deer pictures are all crappy - nothing but knees and feet.

But the turkey pictures are turning out just fine.

Like this gobbler and one of the ladies in his harem...

  

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Scrawny Deer

It's either the same scrawny yearling that has been showing up on a trail camera more than a quarter mile to the north or it's another starved-looking whitetail.

Seems pretty spry notwithstanding appearances.

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A Bee Pays a Visit

An insect pays a visit to one of my trail cameras.

Sure looks like a bee to me...

The Big Pecker

For a couple of weeks there has been a persistent hammering coming from the woodlot to the east.

I'm not kidding.

This hammering goes on for hours on end.  All day long.  For days on end.

Actually this is the beginning of the eleventh year since we’ve actually taken notice of this noisy neighbor.

I already had a pretty good idea of who might be the maestro of the anvil chorus emanating from the woods - but I hadn't had an opportunity to confirm the identity.

So yesterday morning while the girls and I were out for a walk I thought it might be a good idea to see if we could determine the source of all of the racket.

Check this out.

A big old mostly-dead maple - almost completely hollowed-out.

At the base of the tree was a sizable trash heap of wood chips

And while I didn't catch him on the job - this is the bird that is responsible.

photo - Ohio DNR

A pileated woodpecker - Wisconsin's largest woodpecker.

The name derives from the Latin pileatus - "wearing a cap".

This bird is about the size of a crow and announces its territory by drumming on hollow trees, chimneys and utility poles.

Its favorite food is carpenter ants and it will carve oval holes up to several feet long in tree trunks. It feeds its young regurgitated insects.

Yum!

Me and My Girls

Just me and my girls.  Out fetching memory cards from the trail cameras...

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Curious Hen

It seems that months can pass without a picture of a wild turkey on one of the trail cameras.  Lately it's the norm.  Almost as many turkey photos as deer photos.

Are turkeys naturally curious about camouflage devices strapped to trees?

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Purple Haze

Purple sunset tonight.

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The color of the sunset has to do with the way light from the sun enters
the atmosphere. When the sun is overhead and the angle that the light
enters is small, the shortest wavelength light (violet and blue) are bent
slightly and are scattered by the air molecules and dust in the air to give
us a blue sky. If there is a lot of dust in the air, more light is
scattered making the sky appear less blue and sometimes even close to
white.

So where's all the dust coming from?

Spring planting.

Farm machinery is running day and night lately...

Talking Turkey

Another hunter arrived last night - Six Deuce.

Told him he's likely to see both hens...

And gobblers...

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Healthy Doe

Unlike the photos of the scrawny and raggedy yearling I posted recently some of the does are looking fat and sassy.  Probably the glow of pregnancy.

This could possibly be the same doe - pictures taken only a couple of days apart...

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Where's Waldo?

Where's Waldo Whitetail?

How many deer in the picture?

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Contrails

Trail camera photo of my lovely Frau.

But what is stunning are the contrails in the sky above.

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Meteorological conditions were such that the usual commercial airliner traffic left a larger trail of larger, puffier and more persistent collection of contrails than usual. 

I should make a practice of looking up in the daytime sky more often...

Talking Turkey

Date and time-stamped SID's Turkey hunt...

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7:09 AM a hen moves thru the camera view

7:38 AM SID walks down the trail to his blind less than a hundred yards from the location of this camera

9:19 AM another hen cruised past the camera

10:28 AM SID returns home with his gobbler

Way to get the job done!