Well... hunting and cameras have been EXTREMELY slow and frustrating. We barely saw any deer this weekend and our cameras which were popping off like crazy in previous weeks have gone down to a crawl. My theory as to why...
1. Our corn field was the first to be picked in the area (approx Sept 25th) so there is ZERO corn left for them. Meanwhile, surrounding farms have standing beans, standing corn, and freshly picked corn. Patterns have changed drastically
2. Weather. We have been hunting cold fronts that luckily have fallen on weekends but man overall it's been too warm
3. Acorns/Lull - I think these two go hand in hand but seems to have effected our farm lately
4. We got our first picture of a trespasser. We have come to learn that our neighbors Black Lab got injured and lost. The neighbors sent out people to look for it on our place. I feel for the people, so I can't blame them. Although a call before hand would have been nice.
5. I planted our food plots too early. I was all about catching a good storm in Mid August with my grains mix. I did catch it, but now our wheat, rye and oats are knee high and seem to have lost their attraction. The good news is there is a good amount of turnips, AWP, and clover growing under all this stuff. Hopefully it will become attractive again as the deer run out of corn and acorns.
Here's a picture of the plot where most of my pics above came from called the "Old Man Field", but from the vantage point of my ladder stand. Gorgeous looking but we have seen 2 fawns over 2 cold front evening sits here.
Compare the height of the plot in this pic (the only decent buck we've had a pic of in quite a while) to the pics above! Do you think the deer will come back to this field and eat the tall rye/oats?
And finally, our big buck Split Brow smiled for the camera but this was Oct 6th or so and have not seen him since. He will be around I'm sure but I'd love a daytime pic! Or to see him... Any further score guesses? I have him as a 6.5 yr old based on 3 years of pics.
