Coyotes!

Sunset was at 6:03 pm tonight and that did not leave me much time to work with when I got in the woods at 4:30 pm. The wind was dead calm and the woods were quiet except for critters rustling leaves on the ground. Every squirrel sounds like a deer step and it takes a long time to move quietly throught the woods and sort out each noise, one by one. That is the only way to make sure I don't just think something was a squirrel and miss a deer!

I got set up in my stand by 5:30 pm and it was quickly getting dark. The porcupine in the nearby oak tree just sat and slept, balled up, high in the limbs. He was in a different spot than the other day when I saw him, but equally content. It waited for a few minutes and heard a noise behind me. Deer came in from the same direction I had used to get to the stand. They were shielded by a canopy of low growth beech trees. They came up the hill to my right and crossed a stone wall. I don't think they saw me, but they did not come into one of my shooting lanes.

As they crossed the wall, they passed a basketball-sized window in the branches that I may have been able to shoot through, but the deer didn't hesitate and I was not comfortable taking that shot on a moving target. So they walked past me, and off along the hillside. I used a doe bleat call to try to get them to come back around. I thought I heard their steps come back in my direction. but they didn't come close enough to see.

I discovered two interesting things by spending those two hours in the woods today. First, the deer were moving in a direction I have not observed them moving in yet this fall. They have been circling the woods clockwise every time I have seen them, but this time they were moving counterclockwise. Secondly, the deer were passing through a day earlier than I expected to see them. These things mean the deer are changing their patterns and perhaps the rut is starting.

Finally, as I was untying my harness to climb down from my treestand, I heard something I have not heard in these woods yet, coyote yips and howls. They were not too far from where I am set up, but they are now in the area and I wonder if they may have been what has bumped the deer off their previous pattern. Could be, perhaps I will see them soon. It was cool hiking out of the woods in the dark with the coyotes howling in the distance.