December 31st Update
2004 Deer Season Journal

West Virginia had another doe season the last week of the year. We drove down late Thursday evening and put up our blind and retrieved the digital scouting camera.

Once again we had 212 pictures to look at and the camera memory card had filled up on the 29th in the morning.

The most interesting pictures are of the 9 point that we have been watching all fall. He shows up in a picture on the morning of Dec 26th with his right antler missing. The last picture we have of him on the morning of Dec 29th he was still wearing his left side.

We walked all of the bicycle spoke-like trails from this feeder for about 100 yards in each direction but could not find his shed antler.

We also got a picture of another buck missing his right antler on the afternoon of Dec 27th. We cannot tell which buck this one was and he only shows up in one picture. We think that it may be the 5 point that we have seen but we are not sure.

We got a picture of a buck that had lost both antlers on the afternoon of the 26th and another picture of an antlerless deer on the 28th. It's going to get real difficult to tell these bucks apart once they all lose their antlers. The only two that we will be able to identify will be the wounded buck and the large 8 point that has two white throat patches.

It will be interesting to see exactly when their antlers start to grow again this spring.

As I mentioned earlier we put the blind up on Thursday evening. I set out early Friday morning, armed with my digital camera and a video camera, hoping to get the one sided 9 point or the big 8 point on video. I arrived before daylight and was all set up when the sun came up.

Unfortunately the bucks decided to sleep in, just like Ryan. Only three does showed up. It was still doe season and this would have been the perfect opportunity, but there I was with two cameras.

Deer never stop amazing me. At 8:45 I decided to get on with the chores of the day. I zipped the blind shut and put my chair away while one doe was still at the feeder. In the time it took me to put my chair away, about two minutes, two more deer showed up. When I stepped out of the back of the blind and turned to look at the doe I saw three deer. You never know when deer are going to show up.

We had purchased a tripod from Cabelas for one of our deer feeders and decided to put it up. The tripod works great so far, but it was a little bit of a challenge to put together. If you ever should decide to buy one of these, e-mail me and I can probably save you some time. We put it together three or four times before we got it right. We plan on ordering another one for our other feeder. We're getting tired of climbing those ladders and having mud holes under our feeders. With the tripods we can back our ATV's right up to the feeder and fill it up. The tripod has a winch that allows you to lower the feeder right down to the ground and is very easy to operate. We will also be able to move the feeder more frequently to try to keep the large mud holes from forming.

Deer season is now over in West Virginia. Looking back at our season, I have to say that we had a very successful year. Ryan shot a very nice 8 point buck and we also shot four does. I was able to harvest does with my bow, rifle and muzzleloader. The muzzleloader doe was my first deer kill with a muzzleloader.

We also have a couple of bucks that should grow into nice deer next year. It’s going to be fun watching them over the spring and summer. Watch for pictures of them on the whitetail deer photograph page.

Over the winter and spring we will be working on expanding one of our food plots. You can keep up on our progress at our Food Plot Journal.




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