Realm of the Shadow Redux

Title: Thanksgiving
Date: 2009-11-26

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Been hitting the same hunting grounds this year pretty hard since I’ve been off of work so much. The good thing about that is that I have lots of opportunity to harvest a deer early and put some meat in the freezer, the bad thing about that is that I have lots of opportunity to get frustrated by not seeing or not getting the whitetail deer close enough to shoot. Kind of a double edged sword there. As I put in an earlier post my deer blind was basically under water for a week or so while we were in flood stage along the creek bed. During this time I moved my stand to another piece of land that I happened to acquire while asking the landowner for permission to harvest any deer that I shoot if they ran onto his land. He stated that he had given some others permission to hunt his land but no one had taken him up on his offer. Well I decided to a quick scout and found an oak grove at the top of the hill that looked like it had a LOT of activity in it. Basically this oak grove (about a dozen mature white oaks overlooking a nice glade) is between 3 corn fields and the landowner has seen lot’s of deer running the area. The bad part is that the trees are so mature that my tree stand will just barely fit onto the tree. It’s up now and I won’t be moving it again until after season when I can get an actual ladder there to help me take it down (not as young as I used to be). I had some other matters to attend to for the next 2 days and did not get back to my stand until the 3rd day. No sighting at that time but I have hopes for this spot.
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We place hunting season on hold due to the rains. Why you may ask? Well let me tell you , or rather let me show you…

As you might be able to see (sorry the quality is not the best as it was taken with my phone), my blind is a wee bit flooded. Kind of hard to hunt deer when you have to swim to your blind. Hopefully we won’t get much more rain and the water will recede soon. Guess I’ll just have to hunt out of my stand instead.

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Hey all. Well my mid-term for DMED 110 is to do a website renovation and I decided what better place to do one than our own UFP site! So I’ve put pen to paper so to speak and started the redesign from scratch. This is one of the few times that I’ve redesigned one of our websites without the benefit of a template to model off of. So, taking my newfound CSS skills I’ve totally designed this site from scratch. Do me a favor and leave some comments so I know what may or may not need to be fixed or added to it. The design as it stands right now is what is necessary to submit it for a grade, not necessarily a completed site yet although the template will most likely remain as it is shown. Here is the link to the new site (I will migrate it to the actual residence of UFP Squad after my mid-term is over and I have finished the upgrade).

UFP-Squad (proposed site)

Hope you enjoy it and please be certain to leave comments!

Note: I’ve noticed that when you click on the above link you will be taken to the website that is dispalyed within a type of frame. This is due to a plugin called the WordPress Toolbar Plugin and it messes up with the display of the CSS formatting of this proposed site. To remedy this (until I find another fix) simply click on the X graphic in the upper right hand corner of the toolbar (right beside the Get This Plugin link. You can always use your back button to navigate back to this page. Sorry for the inconvenience.

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Hey, went hunting again this morning (in case you don’t already know, I bowhunt the elusive whitetail deer). Have been lucky enough to be able to hunt a fine piece of real estate situated south of Le Roy so it is not too far away from our house in Downs. I was afraid that I was going to have to hunt public lands only as I was unable to get on the land I traditionally hunted because it was full up. I really did not wish to hunt just public lands as they tend to fill up quite quickly and the deer get to be over-pressured which tends to mean that they go nocturnal for the most part. I don’t mind hunting public land once in a while but I usually do so only on days where it is inclement weather as this keeps the “weekenders” and “fair weather hunters” inside. So anyway, I scared a couple of deer up while walking to my stand and was not too concerned as this is pretty typical behavior as deer tend to start the day quite a bit before dawn. So I make my way to my stand and sit in it all day (first day for me this season in the stand, I’ve been in my ground blind since the beginning of season on Oct. 1). I have seen no deer this morning although I did hear quite a bit of noise in the timber but who really knows if it is deer or possibly the infamous 150 pound squirrels that populate the timber this time of year in central Illinois.

What I was witness to however was a couple of feats of predation that made my heart race and put joy in my life. The first was a wonderful viewing of a large owl taking some small mammal (not real sure what it was as it was still sort of dark outside). In case you don’t know, when owls sail past you they are silent due to specialized feathers on their wings that silence the air as it passes over them. So needless to say that as this owl passed over my head I had absolutely no clue that he or she was even there. That is until I saw this shadow pass over my head by about only 4 feet! Imagine if you will, quietly sitting in a tree stand 12 feet off of the ground contemplating how beautiful the morning is, when something the size of a small football with wings that stretch out about 4 feet or so passes soundlessly overhead. It startles you and amazes you all at the same time (you really have to remember that you are standing on a small platform quite a ways above the ground!). That was the first episode.

My second example was of a Harrier Hawk (I recognized this species as it is quite similar to the Red-Tail but without the characteristic red tail feathers). This hawk is known for it’s low angle of attack while looking for small rodents and it is exactly what happened today at about 9:30 a.m.. I watched as he (it had the typical coloring of a male Harrier) first flew from south to north in front of my stand and instantly wheeled in mid-air and dove for the ground in a violent and sudden move. The force of the impact was so strong that is sounded as if a full grown man had violently dumped to the ground from a height of a couple of feet. Now understand that a harrier hawk can’t weigh more than 4 or 5 pounds and this impact was LOUD! It was definitely an awsome sight to see!

But even more awsome was what I saw as I was leaving my stand and walking back to my vehicle. As usual I was checking out the ground for signs of recent deer activity. I noticed quite a few tracks that were not there when I ventured in to hunt that morning and even saw some racoon tracks as well as the following that got me quite excited to see. Anyone know what leaves this track?

unidentified animal track

This last one is a comparison with some small deer tracks (I believe this deer to be a yearling fawn by the size of the tracks).

Ok, I’ll let you off of the hook, this is a track of the Lynx Rufus or in common terms the Bobcat. Some may say that this is merely a dog track but there are distinct differences between dog and large cat tracks the most notable being that dog tracks (like fox tracks) almost always show the existence of the non-retractable claws. If not in a single track, most definitely in the multitude of tracks that I followed this morning. None of the tracks I found had any sign of non-retractable claw marks on them. Some others will say that there are no Bobcat in central Illinois anymore but according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources studies from hunters and naturalists have confirmed Bobcat sightings in 99 out of 102 counties in Illinois. The population of Bobcats are rising in our state and I for one am quite happy about it.

Well that was my adventure for today. Each new day of hunting brings me more wonders to enjoy and praise our Father God about. His creation is truly a wonder to behold and to enjoy. May you also find enjoyment in the outdoor activities that you participate in and hopefully soon I will be able to relate to you on my first harvest of the elusive White-tail of this season. Until then, happy hunting!

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