I didn’t intend to but I dozed off for a bit. A few minutes ago I woke up I opened up the eye balls. Surprise! A Doe was 10 yards away and was not interested in me at all. My iPhone was laying on my lap and I kept watch on the Doe as I quietly slid my hand down to the  phone and turned it on.

This Doe didn’t even look at me as she casually glanced around the yard. Then the Doe walked over by me. I had some water set out next to the porch for my Mouser cat named ‘Little Johnson.’

I managed one more picture (Above) just before she scarfed down the Cat’s water. Yep! There are some Cool things about living in the Deer Woods.

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Most days begin by percolating 2 cups of coffee and going outside to sit on my front porch and relax as one of the several benefits of living  at the end of a county road made from Colitche (a hardened natural cement consisting of gravel.sand, clay and silt.) The hot summer sun gets the road too hard to dig a hole in it with a shovel. And it gets extremely dusty too.

The river, is almost dry in the summer, and is 600 yards downhill. And for miles this whole area has plenty of Whitetail deer.

Any way you cut it, I live in the deer woods. The closest small town of about 70 people is 5 miles away. I grew up in large cities … but I like it better here.

A Visual Overview Of The Deer Woods In Mid September.

Hard Antlers and Velvet. Around here we have some of both in the whitetail buck world. The buck in the picture below has his hard antlers for 2017, there is no more growth for him, only the possibilities of changes in antler color. Some buck’s antlers will become almost white. Others will be chocolate brown. And many will be in between.

Down below we have a buck that’s still in velvet but he is in for the big change. Right now his velvet has constricted tightly around the hard antler and on the left antler there is a lighter colored streak where the hard antler is showing through.

And below we have a buck with hard antlers and the other buck is the one that is ready to lose his velvet.

Bucks are anxious for what’s ahead, they are one step away from the very first of the rut. The buck in the bottom right of the picture is still in velvet.

And here are two year and a half bucks (yearlings). One still has his velvet and the one on the right has his very first set of hard antlers.

I zoomed in closer so you could see these two bucks better. As an aside, there is a definite attitudinal difference in these two bucks. The one in velvet is very aggressive. Velvet or not, he is already a fighter. He challenges other bucks and has had a handful of confrontations with bucks his size as well as bucks that are larger and older than him.

On the other hand, while the hard antler buck shows interest in other bucks and has challenged a few does, they will have nothing to do with him and some does have kicked him and ran him away.

Here is a hard antlered buck that came into the area by himself, he’s on the prowl; but there’s nobody to prowl with, yet.

The pot bellied buck below is still in velvet.

Ahh haa, this is the buck we call Double Finger because of his two finger looking protuberances on his main beams, one sticking out of each antler. As you can see, he is busy packing on the weight.

These bucks are always pausing whatever they are doing and checking out their surroundings.

Now, Double Finger is looking the opposite way and the younger buck seems to be hanging with the big guy this morning.

The sun is bright this morning and the temperature is predicted to hit the high 80’s or low 90’s. We haven’t had any rain for weeks and the ground level grass and weeds are dying off. My food plot, this far, is a disaster. No rain equals no green stuff growing.

But, all in all, it is a beautiful day in the deer woods. The bucks are on the move, in fact I didn’t see a single doe today.

Now I wanted a better picture of that doe, or and other deer, drinking the water. But, lets digress and explain about the water. I used a 14″ square buffet serving tray to hold the water, which was a water source for my Mouser Cats.

An aside about Mouser Cats; if, like me, you live out in the country where the deer woods is you need a few cats — or you’re gonna have more mice and rats in the house than you could believe. Plus, Cats scare off, or kill rattlesnakes too.

Onward.

At 2:00pm the next afternoon I dressed all in black and wore a black mask and put fresh water in the container. Shortly after 3:00pm I was sitting in a rocking chair on my front porch, Only two arms lengths from the water.

I noticed a Doe at the woods edge 70 yards away. She observed the area for several minutes. Then she advanced to my driveway and watched some more. And then walked over to the Water Container.

And as you can see above, I was ready to do some iPhone picture taking.

It took two days for the change to begin.

Deer came out during the daytime, munching leaves and twigs.

Lots of deer were depleted from our recent sizzling, dry and waterless months. I chronicled their story with a combination of my Minolta and iPhone. Below is a doe walking along a old and rusty fenceline.

Every new day was noticeably greener as new growth crept into view.

I stalked along the woods edges and fence lines. I covered a wide area and saw how tough the drought and heat had been on the does.

ABOVE: A Fawn keeps an eye on me as I slip in closer and leave with its picture.

BELOW: The field across from my home is greening up, slowly but steadily.

A young buck walks past, either without noticing me or possibly not caring this time of year.

Here is a different buck chewing on the new green growth that grows along a fence line. The faint streaks of green on the ground are new natural grass.

Notice the ribs showing on this underweight, shinny legged doe below.

The young buck returns to the same place the next day and I get another picture of him.

Normally, this time of the year, I would’ve already seen several velvet racked bucks, but not in this year’s 100 degree scalding mid year heat. I’m sure they were in the area but they weren’t walking as far as the does and fawns were.

And I couldn’t have known it, but, the rain had conditions preparing to make a correction, I was gonna start seeing bucks regularly.

The picture below is taken from my front yard looking across a sun-dried crop field. The distant tree line is 800 yards away.

Normally there would be weeds and native grasses growing. Deer would browse around and pick up tid-bits to eat. Amazingly enough, those tid bits managed to grow and deer, like the one below, are  professional tid-bit finders.

Below is a doe and her 2 fawns and they are nursing actively.

The drought, besides creating a water shortage situation, has made a surprising effect on the deer movement. I see deer out during all hours of the day. The 100 degree heat has scorched the ground level plants that would ordinarily be natural browse.

So the deer are moving much more than is customary.

This year the ribs of plenty of deer are showing. And some deer are like the dow below, skinny and underweight.

TWO WEEKS AGO IT FINALLY RAINED. And we had daily showers and even rain storms for a week. The changes the wet weather brought came on fast. In the picture below you can see some natural green grasses taking hold and starting to grow.

Our area quickly began turning green. More Coming …

After it arrived I wanted to check it out. In the morning I waited until good daylight and walked around looking for deer to take pictures of. The sunlight spread around at ground level and I moved into the woods on a nearby deer trail. Bingo! A doe stood up 20 yards away and looked at me. (See the picture above.)

We both stood in place watching one another. What seemed like 2 or 3 minutes, but was probably only half a minute, the doe watched me. It was one of the does that has a lot of ribs showing. Surprisingly, she was not overly concerned about me and casually walked away.

I continued to walk through the trees and soon I noticed another doe. But I saw it first and carefully moved my camera viewfinder to my eye and took the doe’s picture.

I stayed frozen in place and the doe turned and continued walking and soon she was out of sight.

I cut over toward the fence line and walked slowly along it. A fawn and a doe came by me on the other side of the fence.

The doe and fawn passed by me and I hid myself behind some brush and leaves, and soon another doe came down the fence.

I continued along the fence and stopped behind some cover. Soon a doe walked past me on the way to the fence. She slid underneath the lowest wire and paused.

The doe looked around ahead of her.

I put my finger on the zoom button and zoomed just a touch. The doe looked around for a few seconds more and kept on going.

I kept moving through the woods. In 100 yards and noticed a browsing doe.

I took a couple of pictures and she looked straight at me.

Then she did a 180, paused for a few seconds and moved into the dark shadows.

When I got back home there was a doe in the shadows under a red oak tree in my front yard.

Ahhhhh. It’s cool to live in the deer woods.

It was almost deer season so I hurriedly took pictures of a few wild hogs and a couple of deer, but, let’s get into the reason I gave that crummy Agfa camera away. Here we go.

That year I was keeping up with a very big racked 8-point a mile down the road I live on. I had thought I’d be able to get a picture of him with the Agfa. On my Aerial Map I could see where I had a treestand on the adjacent property — it was 400 yards straight South from where I was seeing the huge buck.

I named the stand area ‘The Hammer Hole’ and on opening day I was there. That first afternoon the sun was low and still visible above the treetops when the bomber 8-point walked smack out of the thick woods 30 yards from me. I didn’t know it yet but I was about to make two mistakes, very big ones.

Truthfully, I was eaten up with wanting to take a picture of this big buck with my new camera. I rested my bow between my legs and turned the camera on. Hmmm, those two things changed my mistake total to three.

The buck turned left onto a trail that led smack-dab to where I was. He was going to where I’ve been seeing him. I raised the camera up carefully and put the buck in the view finder. Immediately two things happened that jumped my goof-ups from three to five.

The camera was still new to me. And this afternoon I was learning things I  could never forget. When the buck was in the view-finder I triggered the picture.

BEEP!!!!!!!!

That camera’s beep was very LOUD. The bomber was two steps from being back in the trees. And he took ’em. I froze, he had not seen me and had not spooked. He might walk back out. I slipped that Loud-Beeping Agfa in my jacket pocket and hooked up my release.

If Big-Boy came back out I absolutely would not touch the camera.  But Big Boy stayed gone.

The next day I purchased a Nikon digital camera. During the next two weeks I saw a few bucks, but not ‘THE’ buck. And then my neighbor got him with his bow. He entered the rack in some Texas 8 Point Contest and it won the whole deal with a P&Y Score in the 160’s.

Unfortunately, I did not get a picture of that buck. And, we should have a picture of a nice buck in this article. So that’s what the above picture of the two bucks is doing. This picture was taken in 2021. The furthest buck was the buck I was after in 2021. And just like Arnold, this year (2022) “I’ll be back.”

Wish me luck, friend.

A few more deer came through the area, some browsing, and some hurrying toward the deer bedding areas downhill from me. In a while something very cool happened. I

had just noticed a doe walking nearby. I touched the On button on my Sony. The doe stopped and looked my way. That target you see laying on the ground is 20 yards from the chair on my front porch that I sit in to watch for deer. I took the doe’s picture.

I stayed still. Basically, I do not want to spook deer, even if its not hunting season. The doe began walking my way. In this picture she is pretty close.

Now the doe was over with watching me and started moving in my direction. Notice that she is licking her lips, right then and there I realized what was on her mind.

The doe is super close now. I’m using a real camera, my right elbow is braced on the arm of my chair, the camera is up to my face and my eye is looking through the viewfinder.

It’s obvious what the doe intends to do next. The Zoom button is right by the Take-A-Picture button. And the zoom was on just a little. So when the doe’s head passes behind the brick porch column I touch the zoom control and run it back to zero.

By the edge of the porch I have a metal container that I put water in so that my mouser cats have water to drink. This year is drought-dry and instead of every 4 or 5 days I have to fill the water up every morning. And now you and I know why.

The doe is getting after some water. In the last two pictures hou can see the ripples from the deer drinking.

The doe continued to drink and I couldn’t help myself, I zoomed in closer.

The drinking continued for a while and, once done, she walked away,

You never know what’s gonna happen when you really do live in the deer woods. Hmmmm, I wonder if I could pull this off and get some video?

The fawn kept watch all around but kept looking to my left. I could tell it was watching something.

I wasn’t that surprised when a Doe walked past me and went to the Fawn.

They walked into the woods to the north and disappeared. It wasn’t long until a different Fawn and Doe came from the south and browsed around eating leaves and forage.

This Fawn clearly had a handle on his foraging skills.

It was munching down leaves as well as new twigs.

Actually, I’m pretty close to this Fawn and am sitting in some nearby tasty shrubs like the Fawn is scarfing down. In the picture below the Fawn checks me out as I take another picture..

The Doe gave its secrete signal that it was ready to move on and the Fawn joined it and they both left.

I saw other Does and Fawns that were 50 yards away and further. This one strolled by at 30 yards.

At 9:00 I returned to the house and nuked 3 frozen burritos and sliced and fried up some golden potatoes. Nice.

The grass around here is fairly tall and this year’s first born fawns still are not big enough to poke up over the tops of the grass in lots of places. Also, most of the time when  you see a fawn as young as they are right now they run for it. A week old fawn can really run fast, too. If you’ve been coming to https://Bowhunting.net for any number of years you probably know I take thousands of deer pictures and put them on the website. And I had the good luck of taking a picture of a very young fawn this morning.

At that moment I did not have my real camera handy. Instead I had my iPhone and it all came down too fast for me to zoom in on the doe and fawn. That said, my picture shows something significant in the deer world. A newborn doe fawn is about the size of a chiwawa, but with longer legs. The doe is a young doe and not as large as it will be in a few years. So we see both of them and that brings to light the size difference of a doe and its newborn fawn.

I like the picture, maybe you will too.

Deer Scouting with Trail Cameras is a mixed bag. Sometimes the pictures are clear and have deer or other wild animals in them. Sometimes the images are blurry and the deer, etc. in the unclear pictures look awful. Other times something bumps your camera and changes the area where you are taking pictures.

But, all in all, disregarding any pictures that are no good, trail cameras are a swell way for you to learn what is in the area you have the camera pointing at. The pictures we are looking at today are from the same area as the previous trail camera pictures were.

Here are two does. They both are moving through the camera area from east to west.

Later on, a doe comes through west to east and a little bit closer to the camera.

A spike buck was our next visitor. It appears to be walking toward the stob that some of the deer in the previous pictures were checking out.

Yep, he definitely was.

In the next picture, the spike has stepped back and is looking around.

As he turns away the trail camera photographs him again. He has a good-sized body and you may have noticed that his hocks are dark brown.

The next day two does walk through south to north.

During the night we get a surprise. Those dark images in the picture below are wild hogs.

In the next picture, a good-sized wild hog walks through the area.

And the next morning we get a photo of the butt of a brown colored wild hog.

So, here is what we know. Bucks still have not shed their antlers, which is normal here. Usually, they don’t shed them until March. And the dark hocks on our young buck show us that he is looking for, or at least thinking about, meeting up with a doe in rut.

The wild hogs could be passing through rather than hanging out in this area. But, we won’t know until we get some more pictures.

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Soon two does came from the opposite direction, one on my side of the fence and the other, a fawn, on the opposite side.

The next afternoon the same buck came from the north west and walked my blind. Notice that this buck is a different buck from the prior two that were in velvet.

Actually, I was glassing the woods to my right and didn’t see this buck until he was almost in front of me. So I didn’t have enough time to frame him up and zoom in to get a better picture.

Some more does came through. Here is one of them.

I’ll be back at the Point and chances are good I’ll see the other two bucks from last week.

Deer Pictures By Robert Hoague…

My first visitors were last week. This spike buck has his first set of antlers. He is a smallish buck.

The next afternoon a wild boar came right in front of my ground blind.

The next afternoon I brought my bow in case I saw that boar again, but the gave me a no-show. However, a buck in velvet hopped the fence and came out of the cluster of live oak trees growing adjacent to the fence.

Notice that the velvet on this buck’s antlers is constricted tightly around the bone of the antler. He will shed that velvet quickly.

I also got a close up picture of the buck below as he ambled by my blind. You may think that this is the same buck as the one above, but it is not. Check out the tines on his rack and you can see that the furthest out points are definitely shorter than the tines on the other buck.

So, we have two nice 8-point bucks that are in the immediate area.

The doe browsed around and I pictured it up some more.

Twenty minutes later a buck walked along the edge of the woods to the east. And, in spite of the comment some folks make, his skinny neck will bulk up later in the year.

Bingo, a second buck came out of the trees and walked off to the denser woods to the north.

5 more does showed up as I waited. Plus another velvet head buck that was over 400 yards away. Then a doe walked and browsed past me.

And that was the activity in the deer woods this morning, June12, 2019.

Early in the morning, with not quite good daylight, but still enough to take a low light picture, I noticed some antlers poking up in the nearby tall weeds to my left.

The buck was moving slow and I could see his antlers turn in different directions I knew he was looking all around. in 5 minutes he was poking up out of the weeds in a more photo taking scenario. I took his picture. It was Ybuck. His velvet is getting compressed around his main beams and tines. So it won’t be long before he sheds his velvet.

Ybuck meandered around and soon came out of the high weeds.

Then Ybuck hooked a left and that change aimed him toward my ground blind, me, and my Sony. 

He paused briefly and looked around carefully. I liked this picture the best.

So I zoomed in tighter on him and grabbed a close up. You can see his “Y” brow tine in the picture.

Ybuck is a good looking buck. If he can get 2 or 3 years more on him he will be a real dandy.

A low noise in the woods caught his attention and he turned and looked toward whatever it was. I couldn’t see it. He wiggled his tail as he watched the area ahead of him.

Then Ybuck walked into the woods and casually strolled out of sight.

Later that afternoon Ybuck walked out of the same general area where he had been this morning when he left.  

I took some more pictures but I don’t want to wear you out with a bunch more pictures of the same buck so we’ll close out now.

Life is good in the deer woods.

When the rain stopped in the afternoon I slipped out with my Sony to see if any deer would show up. It didn’t take long. A smallish young buck came out of the trees to the north and approached my protein pellet feeder. A doe followed along behind him and soon they were both at the protein station. Both of them were soaking wet.

Meanwhile another sixer with a dinky rack walked through the area in the tall weeds. Incidentally, after 3 rainy days there is a little greenery on some of the weeds. This one was wet up to his neck.

Later on that same buck returned and cruised through the wet weeds and tall grass. Notice how long his body is.

When he got to the protein feeder he postured with his ears back and the smallish buck vacated the premises.  

Both deer gobbled down some pellets until the rain started back up. They walked away through the wet weeds. And so did I.

CONTINUED…

To Deer Pictures By Robert Hoague

Finally, near the end of August there was a change in the hot, dry, blue sky weather. When I woke up half an hour before deer seeing and photographing time it was, surprisingly, raining like crazy. And deer being what they are, the few times the rain eased off, they immediately moved around. Since I’m near a major deer  bedding area I saw and took a few pictures, like the doe below that is walking on the edge of the tall dried weeds by my food plot.

The rain cranked back up and later on it slowed down. This young buck came out, apparently wanting me to take his picture.

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It rained most of the night and was still at it the next morning. Around noon I saw this smallish, 6-point buck.

The next two days it drizzled on and off between high winds and rain.

CONTINUED…

To Deer Pictures By Robert Hoague