and a strong cup of coffee

Trail cameras are addicting. You buy one, get some pictures then decide that you should have another one at a certain intersection and the next thing you know, you are like us and have almost 10 out in the woods, trying to pattern your deer.   That excitement of pulling those memory cards quickly vanishes when you see things that don’t belong on your property.   In the past couple of months, we have had lots of activity on the trail cameras; a car driving around in the newly planted clover and a man walking through a highly traveled deer intersection.  Both men had to make an effort to get where they were; this was not just an 'oops, I took a wrong turn.'  We had posted signs up already and clearly that was not enough of a deterrent to keep them away. This is when it pays to be friends with police officers.  I sent pictures of the car to a friend, who came back within minutes with the name of the car's owner.  I did the same thing with the p...

I blame my friend Steve.   I cautiously agreed to go with him and learn how to hunt them so that I could have some first-hand experience when I write.   I would have never guessed that in agreeing to go with him, I would now look at August in a whole new way; it’s bear season! There are roughly 10,000 of us who buy our bear permits every year.   Compared to the 180,000+ deer hunters and we basically have the woods to ourselves to hunt bear. Guess what non-bear hunters?   You are missing out on one of the most exciting hunts you could possibly go on! And that should change.   Why would you want to hunt bears? Easiest reason is management and keeping the population in check with the biological and social carrying capacities across our state.   None of us want to see bears or any animal, reach the point where disease and over-population cause major issues. Hunting helps to put a dent in a growing bear population and with no other predators, i...

I am not sure if the target in the backyard has made the deer around here more relaxed or not, but for this fawn, it wasn't sure what to make of this thing that looks like a deer but doesn't move.  If this target can fool these deer, I am wondering if we could use it as a decoy during hunting season... that is something that I will need to research! Either way, the doe and the fawn both look incredibly healthy!  Always a good sign for the deer herd.

A few weeks ago, my kiddo was handed a piece of paper from his teacher.  I was standing next to him as she told him that when he and his family go for walks in the woods, we could look for some of these animal tracks. My first thought was that it was odd to see "cow" listed there since you don't typically find cows in the woods.  As I skimmed down through the sheet, I was mortified. When I got home, I made an "x" next to all of the animals/tracks that do NOT live in Maine. To me, this is just laziness. There is no moose or white tailed deer listed on here.  No black bear or turkey.  Even if you had no idea about the outdoors and the animals who live in your home state, you still know that the four animals that I just mentioned, are found in the woods.  A quick scan of this sheet SHOULD be a red flag since we don't have badgers here or mule deer.  Maine is not the prairie. As kids get further and further away from knowing the animals that live in th...

This past fall, my routine became almost comical.   I would leave my backpack on the ground, climb into my treestand, get settled and unbutton my wool pants. Four years ago, I wore base layers with monkey-thumbs to hide the Queeze-Away bands that I wore around my wrists.   I never got sick, but those early morning breakfasts and treks to the Sky Condo were a little more challenging when I was trying to hide a pregnancy.   Dad makes sure that I am always secure and comfortable when I am sitting 10-16 feet up in my treestands but if he knew I was pregnant, I was not sure how far off the ground he would allow me to be. So, I kept my first pregnancy a secret during the entire season. I hunted, hiked and pulled the same 10 hour days with Dad that we always did.   I would fall asleep right after dinner, but the fresh air and adventure of being in the woods kept me going.    Hubby shot his first buck ever that season; a small crotch horn and for me, t...

At this point, Staci and I just say that we are doing shed hunting but in reality, we just walk through the woods and see what we can find.  Our latest trip was quite the adventure.  I took Staci to T3 and showed her where Dad had shot his doe.   The trick was getting there without getting hurt. There was enough crust on the snow to be able to walk on it in the morning.  We debated bringing our snowshoes, but ruled that we could handle the crust with the occasional inch break through.  The amount of deer tracks right from the start were nice to see.  They had been checking the old apple trees and following a lot of the same trails that they had been taking during hunting season.  We started off at the Sky Condo, then traveled through the woods to T3.  There were a handful of deer beds close, which is not typical for them at this point in the winter.  It looked like the herd was staying closer to the Sky Condo then they typically did....

You could ask any deer hunter how the herd is in their area and get a different answer every time.  We all want the best habitat, doe to buck ratio and a very limited number of predators in our area. What I didn’t know, is that like moose here in Maine, we have deer that are collared and monitored in order to help biologists understand the true health of the deer herd. I sat down with Maine’s deer biologist Kyle Ravana to ask him about the collaring program and what he (and IFW) hope to learn from it.    Where are the deer that are being collared? And why those WMDs? Right now, we have deer collared in WMD 17 and 6 and want to expand into either WMD 8 or 1.  17 is good because there is usually a good mix of snow pack levels and human population numbers.  6 is almost split into two regions; the west that has the big woods and the east that has farms and urban areas. We really want to get a slice of every possible habitat the deer live in so that we c...