A Winters Afternoon at Long Ridge

  Today I just had to get out and do something related to hunting deer. Can't work the land, yesterday I felled some Maples for the deer to munch on during super cold spells, and burned a couple of brush piles...what to do?

Yesterday it went up to 36 degrees here, and we lost a lot of snow. I didn't even wear a sweater! Today it just about went up to freezing and was very pleasant. Tonight we are getting up to a foot of snow again, so I figured I would take my ATV out to the Western stand to loosen the hanger straps, and retrieve the foam seat from it before the mice beat me to it. Another week or so and the ATVs won't be able to make it through the snow, and we'll be on snowmobiles. I headed up the road we live on and a quarter mile away is one of our log landings you see above, to enter that part of the trail system.

Just above the log landing you enter the Western trails and I am headed to a food plot, both to service my hanger stand, and to check out any recent sign. You can see I have been up here  before we lost some snow on a snowmobile...

When I reach the food plot I can see that the deer have been on this one, digging down through a foot of snow to reach some greens. That will soon stop though, as we begin to accumulate snow, the deer winter in their yards and stop moving around. With a foot or less on the ground they are still active.

Twenty feet up on a Black Birch, shrouded in Hemlock branches is my hanger..Up I go and loosen the straps and toss the seat down to my ATV parked below...

After I got the job completed I couldn't bear to head back to camp quite yet and head on up the Western perimeter trail to see what else is going on. On quite a few steep inclines I have to work the Honda to keep going, but make it up over the top, and head along the upper reaches. A ton of tracks, mostly deer, fox and coyote, but I do find one very fresh set of Fisher tracks crossing the trail. These are just a bit bigger than a large Coyote track, and easy to spot by the way they kind of scrabble along. Then up and across the top and over to the Eastern stand, and on the way back to camp I took the time to mark trees that I plan to take out along the trail this spring. Not an exciting afternoon at Long Rindge Deer Camp, but a satisfying one! Hope you all were able to get out as well! For those of you still hunting, lucky you!