Hunting Report from the Bolt HoleThat's All Folks!

Good news and bad news.

The clear night, winds out of the north, and snow covered ground produced the coldest temperature yet for this season at the Bolt Hole with the thermometer recording a mere 8 degrees this morning at 5:30 AM. I wished for some colder temperatures and got them in spades.

There was a new face at the game camera in the apple orchard overnight. A big buck with either 9 or 11 points. (The pictures are grainy and he kept getting snow on his head to make it difficult to see if he had any brow tines.) I was unaware of his presence when I set out this morning but back tracked his trail into the woods behind the cabin thinking it might be one of the smaller bucks. He dragged his feet in the snow and his dew claws were very clear in his tracks. Both are signs, I am told, that he is in the rut and is actively looking for a doe. I spent several hours at a spot where I could look out over a small valley and saw nothing moving. I returned to the cabin preparing to pack it in for the season.

I found Mark at his cabin drying the memory card out to put into his lap top. Seems that this morning's low temperature produced a lot of condensation/frost inside the camera. Once Mark downloaded the memory card and we got a chance to look at the pictures and see what we had missed, we followed the buck's trail forward and discovered he had bedded down after a 3 AM visit to the camera in the fir trees that are less than 30 yards from my front door. It's quite possible that my activity in the kitchen between 5:30 and 6:00 woke him up and sent him on his way. When he awoke, he passed less than a hundred feet to the east of Mark's cabin. That's the one side he has no windows on. After a quick lunch Mark and I followed his tracks south and east but never got to see him in person. Mark did kick up two bucks and a small pack of coyotes but didn't get to ID either of the deer. They passed a few hundred yards from where I was stationed in the woods but stayed well on the other side of some hemlocks and out of my sight.

We headed back to the cabins and loaded my pickup with some firewood for the Aerie. Mark has to go to work tomorrow and I've got to close up the Bolt Hole (drain the water, pack up foodstuffs, etc.) and head back to PA so our hunting season has essentially ended with no venison on the meat pole but with the knowledge that there are still several bucks roaming these northern zone woods.

We did a great deal of camera scouting in the spring and summer only to see things go topsy-turvy when lots of other hunters took to the field. Many times, Mark had people he didn't know walking the lands behind his place within easy view of his cabin. It's private but unposted land. From the radio chatter we were able to intercept, there were some guys on my property too. The state land is behind me and to the east of the property surrounding Mark's cabin. Many of these guys were staging drives that pushed the deer into nocturnal habits or into other areas. We would wager that many of these guys were from down state (southern zone) because they were not here this weekend when the southern zone season opened.

Anyway, I'm back to the Aerie tomorrow. Terry says she has shoveled the snow that fell last night (2-3 inches) so I've a place to park. Maybe I'll get lucky when the PA season starts in a week and a half. Until then I'll be walking the woods looking for deer tracks in the snow and hoping that there will be one buck (or a doe for I've got a tag this year) that will be out and about during the day. Luckily, we still have one package of fillet from last year to go along with our Thanksgiving Turkey.