Young Bobcats

With several game cameras out on our properties I've captured bobcat photos before, but this is the first time I got photos of a young bobcat with its mother.

The mother appears to be teaching the bobcat kitten some hunting skills. Wait ... There's more ...

A second bobcat kitten appears and tries to catch up with the group. The mother and the first kitten are in the upper right of the photo.

The kittens are still learning how to hunt, but their mother is a good provider ...

It looks like a meal of squirrel for the kittens.

First Deer Hunt

Grandson Reed and his dad prepare for the start of the October Antlerless Special Firearms Season. This early season allows junior license holders and mentored permit holders to hunt antlerless deer with a rifle. This will be Reed's first deer hunt.

Reed's deer hunt started with a 5:30AM wake-up call. It was a cold 26°F with a full moon as they headed to the deer stand. The October full moon is known as the Hunter's Moon because it traditionally signaled the time for hunters to stock up on food before winter.

Early scouting with game cameras showed lots of daytime deer activity at the deer stand, located in a field near an ATV trail into our woods. Reed and his dad saw nothing during the morning of hunting. The deer might have taken advantage of the bright Hunter's Moon and partied all night. I accompanied Reed for the afternoon hunt while his dad was archery hunting at a different location. No luck for either hunter.

After a hard first day of hunting, Reed opted out of the next day's morning hunt. While Reed rested up for the afternoon hunt, his dad continued his archery hunt. As Reed and I headed to the deer stand for the afternoon hunt in the side-by-side we did see some deer activity, a small deer. We passed on this deer. It was too small and no shooting from the side-by-side. The second afternoon of hunting had the same results as the first day, nothing.

After two days of hunting from the deer stand we hadn't seen any deer. I checked the game camera near the deer stand the following day and found the deer had been within 20 yards of the stand on the morning of the second day, when Reed opted out of the morning hunt. Another lesson learned by a young hunter, you snooze you lose.

Chestnuts

As the fall leaves start dropping from the trees, so do the chestnuts.

The American chestnut (Castanea dentata) once comprised one-quarter of the east coast hardwoods and was valued for construction of barns and homes. Some of the beams in our old barn are chestnut. Starting in 1904 a blight fungus on some imported Asian chestnut trees nearly wiped out the American chestnut trees. The chestnut trees in our lawn are Chinese chestnut (Castanea mollissima) and are immune to the blight.

Prior to the chestnut blight, the American chestnut was a major wildlife food source for deer, turkeys, bears and squirrels. The nut is contained in a spiny (very sharp) "burr". The freshly dropped green burrs can be handled with gloves, but once the burr dries out and hardens the burrs can penetrate leather gloves.

We were able to collect some of this year's chestnut crop which will be used to propagate new trees for the local wildlife. This container of chestnuts will be placed in a refrigerator until spring to stratify the chestnuts for planting. The stratification process will simulate winter to break dormancy so they can germinate. Next spring the nuts will start sprouting in the container and then will be planted.

Fall Color

We've had some warm weather lately, but it's easy to detect a seasonal change is coming by the color of the leaves on the trees. Within a day of taking these photos heavy rains and wind moved into the area and now many of the brightly colored leaves are on the ground. Some views from our cabin property.

A view of our barn property from the cabin property.

A view of our barn showing stacks of firewood ready for the change to cooler weather.

Archery Hunting

The Fall archery season started on October 3rd and allows hunters to take deer and bear with the correct hunting tags. Our son Matt is an archery hunter and came here do some hunting over the 3 day Columbus Day holiday weekend. Matt's plan was to look for an early big buck, but for the last 20 years had gotten the bear tag just in case he would see a bear. This year the bear showed up Saturday in the afternoon. Matt took a shot and hit the bear. The bear traveled just over 100 yards before piling up next to a fallen tree. Matt checked the bear and it wasn't dead yet but figured it would expire by the time I arrived to help remove the bear.

When I arrived, with his son Reed, we went to check on the bear and it was gone! We then tracked it to this new location about 100 yards away. By now daylight was fading in the deep woods and the bear and was still able to move its head. We were able to get within 25 feet of the bear, Matt took another shot and the bear ran into the dark woods, out of sight. We then heard a couple of crashes and assumed the bear would be piled up against another dead tree. We searched for an hour and a half for a blood trail in the darkness with no luck. At this point we decided to wait until day break to look for the blood trail before the forecast 9:00AM rain storm.

The scheduled 9:00AM rain started at 2:00AM and continued all day, delivering almost 1 inch of rain. We hunted all day Sunday in the rain for the bear with no luck. On Monday morning Matt was able to find one bear paw sticking out of a large tree blow-down. The bear was found! The next task was getting the bear out of the blow-down and the steep wooded hillside.

We needed to open a road to the blow-down with my front end loader and then remove some of the blow-down just to get to the bear.

Now lift the bear out with the loader bucket. The bear was tagged and the Game Commission was called to report the kill. With instructions from the Game Commission, we started processing the bear. The Game Commission was here today, Oct. 14th, to check the bear.

Matt and Reed with the bear.

The bear had ear tags in each ear. By using the ear tag numbers we found that this warden was the person that tagged the bear last year. The bear was estimated to be 2.5 years old, with a weight of about 200 pounds.

I have multiple game cameras in this area and got this photo of a bear with ear tags. The game camera photo was taken about 130 yards from where Matt first shot the bear.

Walnuts

The annual bombardment of round green spheres from our black walnut trees has started. Being round, the green nut spheres will roll down hill and collect in locations a short distance from the tree, such as my garden.

The local squirrels will collect and store walnuts for their winter meals. It's nice to have the squirrels help with the walnut removal, but they tend to store all these walnuts in all areas of our barn and then leave the walnut hulls and shells in the barn. To reduce the amount of walnuts stored in the barn I've removed two loader buckets of walnuts, so far. I've hauled these walnut to a brushy field a half mile away and hope to start some black walnut trees in this new location. I'm also removing some of the walnut trees around the barn.

Big Green Caterpillar

I was doing some tree removal near our barn when I found this 3 inch long green caterpillar. After some on-line research I determined it was a Luna moth (Actias luna) caterpillar.

Ring-necked Pheasant

I never know what wildlife I will encounter on our property. I recently noticed something moving through the tall grass at our barn and tried to associate this object with the known local wildlife. It turned out to be a ring-necked pheasant which is not part of our local wildlife.

Ring-necked pheasants are not native to the United States but were introduced as a game bird through state stocking programs. Wild pheasant populations have steadily declined since the 1970s and this pheasant must have been from a local stocking program.

This Year's Sweet Potatoes

With the passing of the fall equinox and a couple of mornings at 34°F, it's time to dig up this year's crop of sweet potatoes. Being a root vegetable, it's hard to tell how a sweet potato crop is doing until the crop is harvested. After digging the first couple of hills, this year's crop looked very good.

Many of the hills had multiple very large sweet potatoes.

Freshly dug sweet potatoes have a very thin/soft skin and need to be cured by placing them in a warm environment for several days. The curing process converts the sweet potato starches into sugars for better flavor and toughens their skins to extend shelf life for months. We've had sweet potatoes keep for over a year.

The sweet potatoes were up to 12 inches long and 5 inches in diameter.

Reed's 10th Birthday

Grandson Reed is now ten years old and his father made him a special birthday gift to celebrate his first decade. Since Reed is starting to go hunting, his dad made him a hunting knife.

Not only is this Reed's first knife, this is the first knife that his dad ever made.

There was a small gathering to celebrate Reed's birthday. The birthday cake was Reed's favorite, cheesecake.

Fairy Rings

While looking for edible mushrooms I found several "Fairy Rings" in the woods behind our house. A fairy ring, also known as fairy circle, is a naturally occurring ring or arc of mushrooms.

Fairy rings are caused by fungi that feed on decaying organic matter (e.g., tree stumps, logs, leaves or roots) buried in the soil. Growth of fairy ring fungi begins in the center of the ring, expanding outward in a relatively uniform, circular pattern. Fairy rings can grow and reappear at the same location for years. The circle will start off small in size, getting bigger as it gets older.

The fairy rings I found were caused by strict coral mushrooms (Ramaria stricta), also known as upright coral.

West Hill Bears

Checking the game cameras at our West Hill property this weekend. It's not unusual for me to get bear photos with game cameras, but this time a bear cub had ear tags. This game camera is located a short distance from homes and corn fields. The ear tags indicate the bear cub had been trapped, most likely for being a nuisance bear around homes.

The bear cub was traveling with a much larger bear that must have been its mother. Mother bears will travel a home range of 6 to 15 square miles teaching their cubs where to find food sources, such as bird feeders, corn fields and apple orchards.

The Velvet is Off

During the summer I've been documenting the development of a yearling buck's first set of antlers. It was easy to identify this young buck due to a notch on his right ear. As a deer's antlers develop a soft, furry skin, known as velvet, supplies oxygen and nutrients for the antler growth. Here's a photo of the velvet covered antlers from late August.

In late summer/early autumn the blood flow to the velvet stops and causes the velvet to dry and start to peel away. This photo show the velvet cracking and starting to shed.

A day later and all the velvet was shed and the new antlers revealed. This buck has also shed his reddish summer coat and now has his dark brown winter coat.

Walnut Caterpillars

I noticed a large, white, fuzzy mass at the base of a walnut tree at our barn. The fussy mass was a grathering of walnut caterpillars (Datana integerrima) as they molt to shed their exoskeletons and leave behind a dense, fur-like clump of discarded hairy skins.

Some of the walnut caterpillars in the process of molting their hairy exoskeletons.