Dec. 3-9, 2023

Weather | 12/3, 0.30" rain, 31°, 40° | 12/4, 29°, 43° | 12/5, 0.04" rain, 31°, 37° | 12/6, 23°, 47° | 12/7, 37°, 61° | 12/8, 45°, 59° | 12/9, 0.34" rain, 37°, 43° | 

• Sunday, 12/3: No Deer, Just Other Wildlife
  
  • Dozens and dozens of cedar waxwings are now in trees in our yard. You hear their peeping sounds everywhere.
    
  • I caught my wine diary up to Oct. 10th.
  • I hunted from the Wood Duck Deer Blind starting at 1:50 p.m. until legal deer hunting closing time, which today was at 5:11 p.m. I saw no deer, but plenty of squirrels. I heard swans and snow geese flying by to the north. I also watched turkeys land on Wood Duck Pond's north shore and walk to the west. I watched a nuthatch go down a nearby cherry tree, upside down, hop to a nearby oak tree, and go up that tree right side up. They're funny little birds.
    
  • Mary cleaned floors, did the evening chores, and worked on a cross stitch project while I was hunting.
  • Mary also made a new type of tortilla, made from flour, wheat flour, ground flax, Crisco, and water. The change is the addition of wheat flour and flax. It made a vast difference in my blood glucose reading. With traditional flour tortillas, I can only eat two and the blood sugar levels go high. If I eat four, it's way too high. Tonight I ate three of the new tortillas made into chimichangas. The blood glucose reading at bedtime was 86, which is really good a few hours after eating. Mary is happy that we're back to eating chimis!
    
    
• Monday, 12/4: Saw a Deer!
  
  • I got up at 5:30 a.m. and hunted at the Black Medick blind in the east woods. Nary a deer showed up. The rising sun gleamed through the base of the cedar trees up the hill and east of me and lit up the base of trees all around the east woods. It was really a pretty sight. When I walked home, I noticed only one set of deer tracks. Usually, the dry creek bed is filled with tracks. Deer aren't following their normal patterns this year and are absent in areas where they're usually abundant.
  • After breakfast, I studied aerial maps of our property and decided to try something new. I looked for spots to sit near cedar trees on the west side of Bass Pond to look westerly over the north pasture, since I saw two deer cross that area two days ago. I spotted a big buck rub on a honey locust tree and huge numbers of cedar berries (see photos, below). I found a spot and hunted there in the afternoon. Right at sundown, I watched a buck with a big body, but small antlers, walk towards me and veer off to a valley below the Bass Pond Dam, just north of me. It never saw me, but I had several clear views of it. Now, if only a doe, or button buck, would walk the same route, I'd have something.
    
  • While I hunted, Mary did morning and evening chores and finished a cross stitch Christmas ornament.
  • After a great chicken dinner, Mary and I shared a bottle of 2023 pumpkin wine. It's very good. You can taste the pumpkin and the cinnamon, so it's a real treat...almost like dessert.

Buck rub on 3" diameter honey locust tree.

Cedar berries are extremely abundant this year.

• Tuesday, 12/5: No Animal Movement, So I Watched Wind Blow
  
  • We woke to beautiful sun that turned to dark clouds an hour later. The clouds lasted for the rest of the day.
    
  • On Nov. 21st, we were contacted by our Wells Fargo credit card about a charge to a New York insurance company for over $400. I called them immediately to indicate that wasn't our doing and Wells Fargo issued us new credit cards. I checked today and there was a charge to Comcast in Maryland on Nov. 22nd for over $200, so I called Wells Fargo, again. They added that charge to the invalid charge claim. The two charges will be investigated in the near future.
    
  • I didn't hunt this morning, since I was tired and deer are absent, everywhere. I went to the Bobcat Deer Blind to hunt after our midday meal. I saw nothing, not even a squirrel or birds. At 3 p.m., I returned home, then went to my hidey-hole next to Bass Pond overlooking the north pasture. A northwest wind, with gusts to 20 mph, kept me awake. Several layers of clothing kept me warm. I continued to see nothing, except for a couple crows. I heard a barred owl. Cows north of our property mooed constantly throughout the afternoon and into the night. I think someone was in the hunting trailer just north of the fence bordering our north property line. It seems if you had cows in a pasture and wanted to hunt deer, you'd remove the cattle so they weren't constantly yelling at you while you hunted. I'm hearing shots every evening. There's more hunting pressure this year than we've ever seen during an anterless season in the past. I wonder if the current cost of meat in the supermarket is creating an incentive to hunt deer for venison meat, this year.
    
  • Mary did a load of towels, then hung them on the line to flap dry in the wind. She said, "That was cold deal!"
    
    
• Wednesday, 12/6: Mission Care Package
  • I didn't hunt in the morning, because I knew I needed to handle shipping a package to Katie.
  • I walked to the northwest and found a cedar tree to hide behind that's south of where I've been the past couple days. I needed a different location, since a several-day southwest wind would blow my scent into where I suspect deer walk.
    
  • On Nov. 23rd, I ordered a military care kit from the U.S. Postal Service. It was to arrive in 5-6 business days. We still don't have it, so since Katie said the deadline to mail a package and for her to get it at her base prior to Christmas is Dec. 6th, I took other action. I took the items we bought to send to her to the post office in Lewistown. Teri, the postmaster, prepared a box, got out the necessary forms, and then weighed each item, and filled out the forms for me. I thought we'd need two boxes, but she got everything into one box with amazing cramming and stuffing abilities. She thoroughly taped the box so that it could be drop-kicked to the moon without difficulty. The Lewistown Post Office doesn't have the right computer software to print out the necessary label, so I had to drive to Edina, MO, which is 20 miles west of Lewistown. I got it in the mail at 3 p.m. and the good folks at Edina assured me it was going out in today's mail. I've got to say, I'm very impressed with Teri at Lewistown, who, I discovered in talking to her, lives near us. She was very kind and helpful. She even told me not to go to Monticello, because that woman was crabby. Ah, the beauties of small town Midwestern life!
    
  • I bought a couple cans of gasoline on the way back home. Gas is $2.72 a gallon.
    
  • I got back home at 3:45 p.m., changed quickly, and went to my selected cedar tree, ready to start scanning for deer at 4:20. I saw nothing. At least the cows weren't continuously mooing. After I walked home, deer snorted at me from the west field just beyond our west lawn.
  • Mary and I watched two Christmas-related movies.
    
    
• Thursday, 12/7: Poor Marksmanship
  
  • We had a very warm day. It felt like spring.
  • I checked for deer tracks in the east woods. There are some tracks on the trail through Bramble Hill, where I wasn't seeing anything just a few days earlier. The south part of the dry creek bed still lacks tracks, but the north end of the creek and the south shore of Wood Duck Pond is filled with them. I picked out a wide oak tree to sit behind that is up the hill from that shoreline, near where I once put a stand in a maple tree about 10 years ago, and decided to try it this afternoon.
    
  • After a midday meal, I hunted facing Wood Duck Pond, behind that oak tree. A SSW wind blew down the hill and into the pond. I was looking for deer to the west of me. My squirrel friends checked me out. At one point, something hit the ground next to my right foot. I looked up and about eight feet above me was a squirrel looking down at me. I reached in my shirt pocket for my phone to try to get a photo of him and he spun around and scurried up the tree. About 10 minutes after sunset, a couple of deer showed up west of me, munching on twigs. If I would have been in my Wood Duck Blind, I probably would not see these deer. I shot as one turned around next to a tree, but missed. I think I yanked the trigger, instead of slowly squeezing off the shot. They ran off and another white tail flash of a third deer flew up the dry creek bed. That was it for me, so I walked home. 
    
  • While I was hunting, the mail carrier drove up to the house and dropped off our military care kit. Maybe we can use it in the future.
    
  • Mary and I watched a Christmas movie.
    
    
• Friday, 12/8: Shopping & Rain
  
  • I didn't hunt, because I decided to give it a break and let animals settle down. Besides, forecasts called for rain starting at 5 p.m., which would be when we'd be field dressing deer. Mary said she only saw and heard one bird...all wild things were under cover with dark clouds approaching.
    
  • Mary baked and froze another pumpkin. There are two more left to process.
  • I drove to Quincy for one of my medications, pork loin that was on sale at HyVee, and few other items. I got the "Scan and Go" feature to work on my phone at Sam's Club, which was cool. Christmas shoppers who can't decide which foot to put forward were out in full force, blocking aisles. When I got home, I realized the medication I needed wasn't the one that was automatically filled, so I have to return probably on Monday. The good news is gas prices are dropping. I got home as darkness fell.
  • Mary and I watched a Christmas movie.
  • Rain fell after we walked the puppies for their last outing. It was raining when we went to bed.
    
    
• Saturday, 12/9: Saw Deer, But Didn't Shoot
  • A sunny morning with deep blue skies turned cloudy by noon. We had west wind gusts to 32 mph.
  • I texted a few messages to Katie. She's extremely busy. Bill went to a gift exchange with a good friend and received a nice stainless steel frying pan with a long handle.
    
  • I hunted between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. at the Wood Duck Blind. There are several deer tracks on the path down Bramble Hill to this location. I didn't see any deer. I watched a big V of snow geese fly overhead, from east to west. They were flying slowly, because they were battling against a strong west headwind.
    
  • After eating turkey pot pie that Mary made, I went back out hunting, this time to the oak tree spot facing Wood Duck Pond. Prior to setting up my stool behind the tree, I walked to the east fence line to make sure the neighbor was absent from the deer stand just over the fence. No one was there. I added reflective thumb tacks to various trees from the dry creek bed to that oak tree, so I can find it in the dark tomorrow morning with a flashlight. Wind blasted over top of the hill behind me and onto the pond. Wind swirls around that hill, so sometimes I'd feel a back draft on my cheek, blowing from the northeast, even though the wind was west, northwest. 
  • At 4:10 p.m., an eight-point buck showed up west of me. He slowly and cautiously walked below me, from left to just 20 feet down the hill from me. I was peeking around the oak tree trunk at him, occasionally only seeing the tips of his antlers, or one eyeball. He all of a sudden turned towards me, then trotted off to the west. I think some swirling wind sent my scent to him.
  • Around 5 p.m., three deer stepped out onto the flats northwest of me and walked down to the pond's edge to drink. It's illegal to shoot deer while they're drinking. Also, the end of legal shooting today was minutes away, at 5:11, with darkness setting in. I could not see antlers, or the lack of antlers, due to faint light conditions. The third problem was a willow thicket near the shoreline prevented me from seeing clearly. So, I didn't shoot. Tomorrow is the last day of anterless season. Hopefully, I have better luck, but at least I saw several deer today.
  • We watched a Christmas movie...When Harry Met Sally...it has a couple Christmas scenes in it.