The big deer is a deer that we call ERNIE. We had a couple close calls with him last year I passed him in low light during the late season. The smaller deer has blew up from last year. Looks like he might finish out pretty well.
It's tough to get them big ones to the same spot and stop like that on film in Illinois, what's your secret? Maybe water?
French, Im not going to lie to you. HEs a sewer buck. Ill even attach a pick. The neighbors house was built in the 1800s and only the bathroom drains to the septic tank. . Everything thats in the house ( sink, bathrooms and basement ) drains into a ditch 25 yards from the back door. At times it the only water around for about 40 acres.
Makes perfect sense. Last year during the summer drought it made it easy for me in spots to get them on film.
Regardless of whether you shoot one or not it's pretty awesome that you got all three of those bucks on one trail cam picture!
Im really surprised that we didn't loose both these deer to EHD last year. There used to be three of them that ran together. When the water hole started to dry up in the extreme aug/sept heat we found one of them dead right across the road. I know all three of them were using the same water source but only the one died. Guess that just adds to the myths of EHD. My neighbors only come down every other weekend and last year they didn't come at all in aug. That's when the hole dried up. Im going to make sure this year that I run some water up there once a week if it starts getting hot.