On The March

After a long hiatus these are showing-up on the trail cameras regularly.

During the extended cold snap there was nary a wild turkey to be found.

What I do not know is where they go to hide?

Black Ash Swamp maybe?

Somewhere else?

Anyway, the turkey birds are on the move.... 

 

Anniversary

Sometimes you cannot celebrate anniversaries enough.  Wedding, first buck, deer camp and more.  The post card above arrived in the mail the other day reminding me that this is the seventh anniversary of the deployment of a Snapshot Wisconsin DNR trail camera on our property on October 20, 2018.

The Snapshot program utilizes volunteers to help identify and count the animals recorded on these trail cameras.  Crowdsourcing the data of where and when each photo was taken will hopefully lend further understanding of wildlife population distributions across Wisconsin and how these distributions change over time. Snapshot Wisconsin is a consistent mechanism to monitor all types of wildlife throughout the year.   The most frequently photographed animal happens to be Odocoileus virginianus, the whitetail deer.  Same here.  The top four animals captured here are as follows (in rank order) - Deer, Turkey, Cottontail and Racoon

Funded primarily through Pittman-Robertson dollars provided by the Federal government to Wisconsin DNR. Other funding is provided by a grant from the NASA Applied Science Program through the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Other partners include UW-Extension, Adler Planetarium, Zooniverse, Wisconsin Society of Science Teachers and the Wisconsin Environmental Education Board. 

Having commenced year number eight this last autumn I deployed the third camera having lost the previous two to critter damage and a technology failure.  With five additional cameras deployed on the property this is nothing new. 

Anyway, to celebrate the occasion I thought I'd share a handful of some of my favorite photos captured from the same location.  

 

 

 

From the top: a buck, fisher, coyote, turkey, bald eagle, fawn and some river otters.  Time flies when you're having fun. 

Fun Fact:  In July of last year the Snapshot program celebrated their 100 millionth photo.  The photo featured for Door County was taken by the camera we host.  

Menagerie

From the trail camera trap line is a virtual menagerie of critters.  Including....

A bobcat 

A squirrel and a blue jay gathering acorns

A skinny red fox

A skunk in the daylight

Mama deer and her triplets

Our resident bearded hen (and brood)

And a buckaroo

Two-Step

What next; the samba?

From one camera at the same location there are dancing fawns and a turkey doing the turkey-trot.

 

Menagerie

From the trail camera trap line there is a curious doe, bearded hen, a ghostly whitetail, velvet buck and a couple of fawns.

 

Sunrise Bird

Sometimes one of the trail cameras delivers something with an artistic flair. 

 

It’s all unintentional and unstaged - pure chance.

 

Like this turkey walking towards ‘the light’….

 

Ruby

Living in the country has all sorts of advantages and consequences.  On the consequence side of the ledger it goes beyond simply brown bats getting into your HVAC system.  There are external forces at work too.

Everything from deer, ring-neck pheasant, bunnies, possum and turkeys in the yard.

And if you're a red-golden retriever hunting dog it sometimes becomes a wee bit overwhelming....

Thankfulness

As per usual the Thanksgiving Holiday falls during deer camp.  This year it’s just Jill and I as nobody wants to be with us.  Which is just fine.  It’s a relaxing day of filling the wood box, drinking coffee, stuffing and roasting a big, fat chicken, maybe chilling-out in a deer stand for a couple of hours followed by sitting by the fire.

I've been counting my blessings because I've got a great deal to be thankful for.  My family, my friends, neighbors, reasonably good health, my marbles, a comfortable retirement, a new hunting dog and the great outdoors.  Let's face it - we live in the best country on planet earth.

 

An additional ray of sunshine is this bit of news:   According to the American Farm Bureau Survey this year's Thanksgiving dinner will see a dip in price for the second year in a row.  Thanksgiving dinner for ten will set you back $58.08, down 5% from last year; yet still 19% higher than five years ago.

 

Over the 39 years the Bureau has kept records the turkey has accounted for an average of 43% of the total dinner cost.  This year is no different - a 16-pound turkey accounts of 44.2% of the 10-person feast.  2024 brought a 6% decrease in turkey prices - a surprise considering  the USDA reported that growers raised 6% fewer birds this year and the lowest number since 1985.  In further evidence that presidents do not set the price of your turkey dinner contributors to the decline in turkey numbers have been the highly contagious avian influenza along with a drop in consumer demand.  This drop in demand has caused prices to fall.

 

There is some stuff in our world that can be improved-upon; yet on balance this is a terrific time to be alive.  If you glass is half-full like mine take a moment to count your blessings.  We have much to be thankful-for.

 

The staff here at The Platz extends their best wishes to you on this Thanksgiving holiday.   

Gobble, gobble...

 

Cluck!

Not so sure what to make of this observation but I haven't seen any big bucks on the trail cameras lately.  Have my neighbors killed them already?  Plenty of does, a handful of spike bucks, does with turkeys and brood flocks of turkeys all over the place.  I suppose the acorn crop is an attractant.  Who knows?

 

Talking Turkey

Three photos from a tail camera burst shot.  Gobblers in the snow.....

Deer Camp Thankfulness

As per usual the Thanksgiving Holiday falls during deer camp.  This year it’s just Jill and me as nobody wants to be with us.  Which is just fine.  It’s a relaxing day of televised parade and football and a traditional stuffed turkey roasting in the oven.  We're also baking a giant yam and there is pumpkin pie for dessert.  

I've got a great deal to be thankful-for.  My family, my friends, great community and neighbors, a comfortable retirement, reasonably good health and the great outdoors.  A new pup rounds it all out.    

An additional bit of good news is this:  The American Farm Bureau Federation's 38th annual survey provides a snapshot of the average cost of this year's classic holiday feast for 10 checks-in at $61.17 or less than $6.20 per person. 

 

This is a 4.5% decrease from last year's record-high average of $64.05, but a Thanksgiving meal is still 25% higher than it was in 2019, highlighting the impact of higher supply costs and inflation have had on food prices since before the pandemic.  Anecdotally, our ten-pound bird was free.  We earn Holiday Bucks from our grocery every December which can be redeemed for a free turkey or ham.

 

In closing the staff here at The Platz extends their best wishes to you on this Thanksgiving holiday.   

Gobble, gobble...

 

Pomp And Circumstance

This made me smile.....

Wildlife Selfies

From the trail camera trap line there are velvet bucks, a coyote, a brood flock and a groundskeeper....

Critters That Take Flight

Blue Jay

Great Blue Heron

 

Turkeys 

 

Trail Camera Bonus

While we were vacationing in Eastern Europe and interesting development was occurring here.  Something that was unexpected.  One of the trail cameras was patiently documenting the kill/discovery of a whitetail deer by a pair of coyotes.  It was nothing short pf a remarkable coincidence.  An unchoreographed sequence of photographs captured over five days.  I couldn't have staged it better if I tried. 

 

After we returned home I went out to fetch the SD cards on the trail camera trap line and I came across the remains of the deer laying within the field of view of a trail camera. The camera is circled in the image.

 

Examining the skeletal remains and judging from the size of the bones and the skull this appeared to be a yearling doe (born in spring 2022). Likely cause of death was predation by coyote.

 

Do I know that for sure?   Nope. Nevertheless, the photographic evidence is beyond circumstantial. 

 

What I do not know is if the deceased was crippled by a collision with a vehicle, weakened by winter and lack of browse (unlikely in farmland country) or otherwise compromised only to succumb to the whim of Ma Nature.

 

Nature can be a cruel mother. Yet that's how things work. Everything on the landscape is someone else's dinner.

 

These images document what unfolded.

 

Everyone eats whitetails....

 

Of hundreds of digital images here are a select number that capture what unfolded.

 

The event unfolded like this with a pair of coyotes lounging-about in the snow.  Then, over the course of about 20 minutes, they alternately feed-upon and drag a deer carcass into view.  What are the odds of this happening spontaneously?

 

For following morning the first to arrive on the scene are the crows, followed by additional avian predators.

 

 

Bald eagles - both adult and juvenile 

 

And, of course the coyotes returned

There were nocturnal visitations

 

More daylight visitors

 

Crows in a standoff with a juvenile bald eagle

And nocturnal

This alternated on and off...

 

 

 

Including a visitor from the arctic circle who winters here - The rough-legged hawk 

 

 

Curious deer and turkeys paid a call

And on the fifth day the batteries died

 

Almost 20 years of trail camera monitoring and I've never had something like this unfold.  I'm not one to anthropomorphize things but it's almost like these coyotes were doing me a solid favor.