When I’m watching outdoor television, there is nothing that gets under my skin more than hearing the person in front of the camera say something like this:

“Well……we’re on our way to Battle Creek Outfitters to hunt for a few days. Jim, of BC Outfitters, has been watching a few bucks during the year, so hopefully we’ll have a chance at one of them in the next few days. We’re gonna get a shower, head into our stand, and hope for the best”.

What they really should be doing is telling the truth – something like this:

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Normally in Michigan the rut doesn’t really start to kick in until the last week of October, first part of November……..or does it?

My sister’s boyfriend captured these pictures on his trailcam recently, and after seeing them we were trying to decide if the start of the season shouldn’t be moved up a little bit.  Haha!  I’m sure he wasn’t expecting these pics when he checked the cam.  I’m sure this young buck was just “practicing”, but I still think these are once-in-a-lifetime shots, especially during this time of year.

Hopefully this little guy gets a chance to pro-create later in the year, and hopefully this doe gets a rest before then.  I’m thinking she’s probably a little annoyed at him at the moment.  Although, maybe she needs the practice too.:):)

Upcoming posts: This week we’ll have some more camping escapades, along with a post about shooting the 3-D course.  And maybe we’ll do a post once Jeff gets his new boat as well.  Stay tuned!

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Jeff and I headed out to one of the properties we can hunt again last Sunday.  We needed to finalize some treestand issues, and plus we wanted to check the trailcam again.  I was chomping at the bit to check it, after what we found on it a week ago.

Unfortunately, Mr. Big didn’t make a return visit, but we did catch a decent little buck on camera.  And if any of you are keeping score, there have only been two pictures – in the entire three weeks that the cam has been out there – that did not have a buck in them.

We decided to leave our stands where they are for now, and we’ll play it by ear as the season progresses.  We also moved the camera closer to where Jeff’s main stand on the property is, so hopefully that produces some good trailcam pictures as well.

In a related story, one of Jeff’s friends – who hunts a property near Jeff’s house – was out scoping some fields in the area a few weeks ago, and captured some footage of a few nice bucks.  The video quality isn’t the greatest, but trust me you wont need any better footage to see exactly how big these deer are.  For those of you who don’t want to watch the whole video, skip ahead to about the 2 minute mark – that is where the action really starts.

The season is only a few weeks away, and Jeff and I will have to make the decision that every hunter dreams of:  which big buck property should we hunt tonight?

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Jeff apparently has way more time on his hands than I do, because he picked up on something pretty cool last week.  Hopefully by now all of you saw the nice buck I captured on trailcam, and if you didn’t, here he is again along with a picture of him from last year……or at least we think so.

A very distinguishable feature of this buck is his uneven brow tines, and if you notice they are uneven in both pictures, and look pretty similar.  Jeff, myself, as well as a few people on a forum Jeff’s frequents agree that the buck in both pictures is the same buck.

The other part we’re very excited about is that the buck had a nice-sized body in November of last year.  I can only imagine what he’ll look like come November of this year – sporting his nice new head gear, and all bulked up for the rut.

Now if only one of us could pull off being able to have a picture taken with him, we’d complete the series.  I’d love to wrap my hands around those antlers, and I’m sure Jeff would too.

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Sunday morning found me trampling through the 100 acre property we can hunt in search of my trailcam I had put out two weeks earlier.  The cam is in a new spot, which we were thinking of putting a stand in, so it took me a little bit to locate the area, considering it had been a few weeks since I was there.

On my way to the location I was fighting the awful humidity – even though it was only 9:30 in the morning – as well as numerous mosquitoes and one huge horse fly.  My jeans were soaked from the dampness on the foliage, I was sweating something fierce, and didn’t have one spot on me that hadn’t had a mosquito land on it – I was wondering what in the hell I was even doing out there.

I swapped out the card on my trailcam, grabbed Jeff’s trailcam that he wanted taken down, and headed for the car.  After a ten minute walk, I jumped back in the car and headed home to see what we had.

And that is when I remembered why I put myself through everything I do in order to scout and check trailcams.

After flipping through the trailcam photos I was pretty pleased at the buck-to-doe ratio in the pictures.  I had a few fawn pictures, and a couple pictures of a doe and her fawn, but overall I had a lot more pictures of bucks then does.  These bucks weren’t huge, but I was still pleased with the results, and then I stumbled across this picture…….and somehow all the hurt and turmoil I went through to check the cam went away.

Isn’t he a beaut?

All of the pictures you see in this post are of him, and I hope I have an encounter with him at some point this year.  I literally made so much commotion upon discovering his picture on the SD card that my wife came running in to see what was going on.

Hopefully I have a date with him later this year.  And the picture of him made all the effort I went through in order to check the cam completely worth it.

I love this time of year!  And you can bet that I left the cam in that exact spot, and Jeff and I will check it again when we move a stand to that location this weekend.

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