Two hours after daylight this morning, on the PA opener, I saw my first deer. The were milling around, about 75 yards away in some thick stuff. I picked up the bino's for a closer look and was watching bits and pieces of deer feeding. I must have watched them through the binos' for about 5 minutes or so when all of a sudden, I saw more movement behind them. But, something didn't look right about what I saw. I kept watching. All of sudden, the deer started blowing and three came barreling toward my location. Behind them, was a bobcat! The cat bounced out into the open behind the deer and stopped. The biggest doe of the bunch, blowing constantly, started stomping and chasing the bobcat. She kept cutting the cat off, side to side and charging toward it. The cat finally retreated, with three does, blowing constantly closely behind. Man, what a scene that was. I've never seen anything like it. Whats more, we've been seeing more and more bobcats in this particular location. In fact, I have several cats on trail cam. Not sure about size, but one pic in particular appears to be a really big cat.
Very cool! That's why I like to have my mini video cam with me when I'm hunting. Here's a pic from video that I took. It'a a yote in an area that I've hunted for 8 years and never seen one.
Yep, and now you don't have to draw the tag. You buy a furtaker's tag and can purchase the permit for 6 bucks. I had one at 20 yards last year. I can't wait to see one this year.
I got busted by three does as I was just about to set up my climber. Walked in off of the trail and got about halfway into getting the climber on the tree when the three does entered the clearing on the far side of me and took off squawking. that was right at 6:00-6:15 AM. Then when noon hit I figured it was too warm for them to be moving and decided to still hunt my way up the trail a few miles and work my way back to be on stand for around 5:00, just as I was about 1/4 mile from my stand I stopped for a few minutes and noticed a set of ear flopping about 35 yds in off of the trail bedded down as I attempted to get into a better shooting position the other doe that was about 5 yds behind her busted me. So all in all not a bad opening day. saw five doe, a fox, a bunch a chippies and squirrels. Didn't need to hit the thermacell until the afternoon. Can't wait until Friday, I'll be jonesing all week.
I usually take my camcorder with me, but I didn't charge the darn thing. I'm not sure how good of footage I would have got since it was fairly thick in there and all I saw mostly were bits and pieces of kitty and deer chasing them. Only two or three times, i had a clear view of the cat for more than a few seconds at a time. I saw a total of 9 deer in the am. I didn't get back out in the afternoon. I had a date with the wife and kiddos. Is it Saturday yet?
