A walk with deer and The Wife



How many deer can you see?



So today I was sitting around the house getting restless. It was a beautiful late winter day that was supposed to be spent thinning Fir trees on the property. But with the wind that was blowing I decided to take the safe route and save that for another day.

Since the sun was out and the sky was blue I decided to go for a hike up from the house. I texted my wife to tell her where I was going to be and headed up the hill with the camera.

As I started down the road I was looking for a heavily used game trail heading up the hill. When I found one that looked good I took it. I knew I wanted to go check out an old coyote den to see if it was being used. I also wanted to count deer and look for deer sheds.



cougar tracks



After I got to the top of the first hill I dropped into the creek on the other side. Every little corner or drainage seemed to have deer coming out of it. I was going to take a picture of each group so I could come back and count them all but each small group seemed to go over one hill and mix in with another group and then split up again so it was hard.



I got up into the area where the coyote den is which is in a big bowl of sage brush covered hills, and then the den its self is on a hill in the middle of the bowl. As if the coyote who built it wanted to see all around each morning it woke up. Although the den was not in use I counted around 40 deer on all the hill sides around me.

I continued to walk up the bowl to a small aspen grove. I found some cougar tracks in the snow outside the aspen grove.

 My wife texted me saying she was home and I explained where to find me. I found a nice spot to sit and wait for her. A half hour later she got to me and we started walking again.

My wife was being a trail blazer and way out infront, and of course found a nice 5 point mule deer shed under a big antelope bush. It was getting late so we headed down the hill to home.