Bill's Bucks

Almost 50 years ago, not long after they were married, Bill and his wife bought a small hill farm of about 50 acres. The open fields are bordered on all four sides by woodland beyond which are number of new houses, some of which are on fairly large properties.

For over a year I’ve had a couple of camera traps at Bill’s place. Those cameras have captured photos of both red and gray fox, raccoons and opossums and skunks, gray squirrels, wild turkeys, eastern coyote, black bear and quite a few white-tailed deer.

Recently I put one of my camera traps underneath a large red oak in a fencerow between two old fields. That red oak had an abundant crop of acorns which began falling in late September.

Those acorns attracted quite a few deer to feed on the abundance; fawns and lots of does –

And bucks; in all there were six bucks that repeatedly came to feed. Here are Bill’s bucks –

Bill doesn’t hunt, but he does allow a neighbor to hunt on their farm. Last year the neighbor never saw the large-antlered buck that one of the camera traps had photographed – it will be interesting to see what happens this year.