Deer chasing season starts

The main Maine deer-hunting-with-weapons-of-mass-destruction season opened last weekend. During the course of several years, the number of deer we have seen in our back woods has been HUGE. The last two years have resulted in the local deer ravaging our plants (mostly the hostas are our concern) in our yard. We didn’t mind when they munched on the yews and evergreens. The use of our hostas as a salad bar has been upsetting. As Mom used to say, “Shoot them all!” OK, she didn’t exactly say that but she was also mad about ‘dem expensive-plant-eaters.’

The week before the hunting season started, we captured the above shot from the back woods game camera. The images at right and below are from a day or two before the start of the season. As for local hunting action, there was one vehicle parked along our road for part of several days during the past two weeks. We assumed it was some local hunters setting up for the hunt. During several recon patrols by Murphy and I, we failed to identify any location where these fellows were setting up. Then one late morning during the first weekend, we discovered one guy was only parking his truck here and he went off somewhere else with his partner.
We have not seen our southern/eastern neighbor doing any hunting (typically her son would participate). Of interest is the buck (or two?) since seeing males is more of a rarity.

