Last Sunday, we were on patrol to the new beaver home on the farthest bog. As we proceeded along the old railway trail and approached the area just before “the field,” we spotted a white tail deer in the near wood on the left.
This deer did not want to leave the area. Contrary to almost all our other encounters in the past, this deer did not bolt. She stood her ground and provided a number of shots like the one you see at left. She was motionless for several minutes as I secured Murphy to a tree and started to creep up toward her. She was standing between two trees and, as I got a bit closer, she only moved ten or so feet further back.
The second image shows her Pooping! That is how bothered she was about our visit. After this point, we proceeded down the trail, past where she continued to leisurely wander around in this little wood.
This was all the excitement for the day: the new beaver wetland was frozen. No beavers were ever in sight like the previous visit.
On Friday last, we went on patrol to find where a local hunter has been setting up for this season. We have noticed his SUV parked just up the road from our house (tenth of a mile). While there is a tree stand across the road and up over the hill, we guessed he was in the woods on our side (else he would have parked on the other side at a pull-over).