Pictures from the Trail

Deer hunting season is not far off.  For those of you outside of the Cheesehead Empire this is a major holiday.  Schools shut down in some places.  Factories and businesses barely pretend to be open, perhaps just doing scheduled maintenance.  And the effort people go to in the quest of a brag worthy mighty antlered buck can get ridiculous.  It is not unusual for hunters to place multiple trail cameras out in their preferred spots, and to carefully correlate the location and time of appearance of individual critters.

We are just looking for a bit of family time and venison, so our efforts are casual, nay, they are slapdash.  I put the camera out here and there and get images of this and that.  For instance:

I set this cover a wide vista.  But I made a crucial mistake.  The little branch in front of the camera had a few jaunty fall leaves on it.  They blew in the wind,  giving me 300 images of blurry leaves and nothing else.  Live and learn.

OK, that's more like it.  Our tentative tree stand spots have various designations.  Tree Plantation.  Parker's side.  This is from Deer Highway.

The question of what will actually turn up on camera is interesting and with the cheap models we use there is no sensitivity setting.  So only occasionally do you capture a smaller denizen of the forest such as this jaunty squirrel.

Some "targets" are of course so big they can't be missed - photographically of course.  It seems from the images that there is enough delay of the shutter that we get lots of pictures of the rear end of animals.  So many "deer butt" pictures as my grandson calls them.  And this black bear that strolled past, well, his butt looks big from any angle.

Bites of Orange

Halloween, in a sort of watered down Covid era form, is soon upon us.  There will be a lot less trick or treating.  How ironic really, for the one holiday where wearing a mask is standard.  

But that does not stop people from decorating.  

Pumpkins are part of the décor, and as October moved along you saw more and more of them turning up on porches.  Evidently I was not the only one to notice....

On a morning walk I came across this specimen.  It was off its porch and out on the sidewalk.  The location is "down by the creek" where various wild life can be found.  

So what got it?   I zoomed in for a closer look.

No shortage of critters who like pumpkin.  Squirrels, raccoons and others look like possible suspects.  But realistically only one suspect has teeth big enough to leave these gouges, and strong enough to take a couple of nips out of the stem for good measure.

Deer.  Bane of jack-o-lanterns.

Sole Survivor

For a while there I was off fishing a couple of times a week as part of my "Strange Fish Challenge". On one occasion I bought a dozen minnows with the plan to get out early in the morning to fish before local layabouts got to a popular site.

I put the minnows, in a minnow bucket of course, into the backyard pond for the night.  Naturally the top came off, the minnows escaped and I had to round them up.

A few had died.  Fish generally don't do well with changes in temperature, water quality etc.  The survivors I recaptured, put back in the bucket and basically never caught anything with them.  I don't remember if I let some go or not, it was a discouraging day.

Fast forward to October.  I'm getting the pond ready for winter.  The pump comes out.  I get as many leaves and such out as I can, so that the water is not nasty next Spring.  I usually bail the pond out to the bottom, but this year there seems to be a frog living and hibernating there so I contented myself with simply bailing a few buckets out and replacing with clean water from the rain barrel.

But wait a minute, what's that flopping in the grass?  It turns out that one minnow had survived, nay, had thrived in the pond for several months!  Crummy water quality, marauding raccoons, my mucking about with a net clearing out leaves and such....and he's still there! 

This fellow deserved to live, so I tossed him back into the pond until the next day when I could launch a suitable rescue operation.

I carefully emptied the pond to the point where I could net him.  A quick photo op...

My fish consultant ID'd this as a Blunt Nosed Minnow (Pimephales notatus).  They are pretty common state wide and favor streams and small rivers.  

So into a ready container and off to a nearby small stream.  Here Survivor Minnow is contemplating his new home.  I wish him well.

Upcoming Programs - The Virtual World

I have been missing the opportunity to give talks on various history and technology topics.  But, times being what they are....

I've agreed to do a couple for the school district's adult community education program.  Well, that's not entirely correct.  I'm doing one and turning the other over to the video production unit of the high school FIRST Robotics team.  

My program is a virtual visit to the excavations at the Roman site of Vindolanda.  Days in the trenches, evenings in the pub.  About half serious.

The other program is going to be a history of robotics in our community.  Twenty years of silly and serious beginning with the ancient combat robot times and going up to the present day when the FIRST team builds things that I can marvel at even without understanding how they do it.  

My program is "in the can" as they say.  The high schoolers will probably go right down to deadline and come up with something way better.

Here's a link to the class brochure with sign up information.  If you need a break from the badly written and implausible script that is the year 2020, check it out.

Brochure

Their facebook page

Virtual presentations are different than the live versions.  Less fun in many ways but you do have a chance to tweak and tune them for the maximum level of polish.  These are in some ways easier than the real thing and in some ways harder.....you can't judge your audience when you can't see them, so changing course, spending more time on interesting parts, speeding up for the boring stuff...not possible.

Careful Aim...

I can't recall shooting a deer rifle in my 63 years and change.  Just BB guns and .22s as a Boy Scout.  A shotgun a few times.  Maybe that muzzle loading contraption my father in law had me fire once qualifies.

But if you are going deer hunting it seems a useful thing to learn.

Here's my results at 100 yards range.

Not bad, especially as two of the errant shots (marked with pencil) were by my son who sighted in on this target before me.

As the deer we will be dealing with seem, on the basis of evidence to date, to be clueless enough to approach much, much closer, I figure this is sufficient.  Although if they insist on casually strolling up to 10 yard range they'll just be a huge brown blur that fills the entire scope view and that might actually make things rather challenging.....

Woolly Bear 2020

Every fall I try to publish a photo or video of a representative Woolly Bear, those cute multicolored caterpillars that allegedly forecast what the winter ahead will be like.  Forget the width of bands and the date of first appearance, this guy has captured the spirit of 2020 perfectly.

Belly up and sluggish on the sidewalk.  I picked him up - he hardly noticed - and tossed him out into the grass.

More optimistic than the 'bear, I remain, 

Your Humble Nature Correspondent.

Oh Pioneer! 2020 Edition.

My ancestors back five generations were pioneers out on the Minnesota frontier.  They arrived before the Civil War, actually before Minnesota was even a state.  Stories from that era are few and likely embellished but it is reasonable to assume that they were very self reliant folk.  The nearest town that would amount to anything was 25 miles away.

The other day I was up north and feeling a bit the Pioneer myself as I stacked firewood.  It involved hauling a cart around, tossing split wood here and there.....rather noisy work.  But these gals did not seem concerned in the least.

I hit zoom on the camera and walked closer.

The smaller and presumably younger one had by this point seen enough and literally high tailed it.  The other one just stood there.  I walked closer.  Closer still.  I had to reduce the zoom on the camera back to normal range.  

This is the point at which the doe decided to saunter off elsewhere.  Actual final range:  six paces.

I have not had a chance yet to sight in the deer rifle.  I'm not sure I'll actually have to.