A Ruck In The Woods-ish

After the range I went home, dropped things off in a secure manner, and did a ruck today on the nature trail.

The leaves are a-changing.

 

Overcast, but it was a very pleasant day to get out and move about. 

I did a 3 mile walk carrying 32 pounds in my ruck in the woods. I did it in an hour, with a varied pace, stopping or often walking at a slow and quiet pace to take the occasional snapshot of the wildlife.

  

 

Quite a number of deer were out asking to be photographed. 

Also got to see the ducks work on the synchronized mooning of passers-by.

 

It was a nice relaxing activity outdoors in very enjoyable weather.

Hello Dere Deer

It's beginning to feel like spring, but winter isn't done with us yet.

But the younger deer are now out and about, and spending time hanging out in our backyard.

 Very cute and not concerned about a human looking at them, nor about the dogs barking incessantly at them for the temerity of the deer being on their turf.

Move Over Murder Hornets, Make Way For Attack Deer

Just when you think the year won't get much weirder, we have the case of the Michigan attack deer.

The Detroit Free Press: 'I thought I was going to die': Woman attacked by deer in front yard, saved by son

 

A Little Hosta And Chill Action

This morning we had some visitors to the backyard.

 Mommy and fawn strolled right in, nibbled on some hostas and then headed into the treeline.

The momma deer then came back to the backyard after hiding the fawn and is just lying down chilling about a dozen feet away from the house, without a worry in the world.  She's been lying there for a couple hours taking a break from all her fawncare responsibilities.

She clearly sees us looking at her from the windows, and reacts to our movement, but doesn't seem to mind at all.

In And Around The House

Yesterday, some repairs were made in the house.

The drawers in the kitchen and bathrooms have a very strange  bracket system.  The metal rail goes to a plastic bracket that is screwed into the wood.  Unsurprisingly, the plastic bracket  over time splits and the drawer then tends to droop with the back of the drawer dropping and the front getting caught on the top of the cabinet.

I've looked for years for replacement brackets  but could not find them anywhere, nor could I find the manufacturer for the cabinets. I finally figured out the secret.

On the door under the sink in the kitchen only, there is a sticker.

 

Looking up the I code at the KCMA website got me the manufacturer information.

Contacting the manufacturer, Kitchen Kompact, they were super helpful and sent me a batch of the brackets to replace the broken ones quickly and at no charge.

I then replaced all the broken ones including the ones I had done ersatz repairs to with tape and pieces of plastic cards to strengthen them.

Good to fix them all before Mother's Day.

Then I cleared the shower of an accumulation of the children's hair that was clogging the drain trap.  Disgusting, necessary, and about 5 pounds of hair in a huge hairball was removed and the drain now flows freely.

Meanwhile, outside the house we had visitors.

 

Deer came through the backyard, getting some snacking in as they wandered by.

Kinda neat to see, and they came right up to the deck which was nice.

A Buck A Yard

Saw this mighty proud young buck in our backyard tonight:

I'm loving this camera - 25,600 ISO, 24-105 lens at F4 and dusk became sharp and clear - through a window no less and it would lock in focus no problem.

 

The buck was strutting through the backyard like he owned the place.

He also rubbed his antlers against a tree

He then proudly marched off, following the trail of a doe that had come through just minutes earlier.

He's got some definite injuries to his front legs - when I posted the pic on Facebook,  an outdoorsman friend of mine and a veterinarian friend of mine both immediately picked up on it, noting the left is looking calcified and the right atrophied. 

 Pretty amazing how they picked up on that so quickly, and I got to sit back and learn some new things, which was very cool indeed.

He's been around the neighborhood for awhile now, but this is the first time he remained in our backyard for longer than a flash and with enough time for me to grab the camera.  Hopefully, he makes it through the upcoming winter and sticks around.

Visitors Of An Animalian Kind

With the power out it has been pretty quiet around the area.

So quiet that the local wildlife have decided to take a closer look.

This baby deer came right up to the window to nibble on some shrubbery.

When she saw us watching her from the window she was a little surprised and backed up and then headed on her way.

Then we had a meterologically adept animal come by, and unfortunately he's been seeing his shadow quite a lot lately, especially considering it was snowing again today.

Yes, we had a groundhog perambulate around the backyard and come by the windows before he merrily wandered off into the woods . . . . and snow started falling yet again.

Temperatures are forecast to hit freezing again tonight, and we'll likely see snow in the morning.

A Spare Buck Or Two

Last evening while walking Jett around the neighborhood, he alerted me to the fact that we were not alone.

This was the first time I've seen male deer on our street, up till now it's always been does.

The racks on each buck still had downy fuzz on them, and they were nice sized indeed which points that would make them quite the prize.

The bucks had no fear of people and seemed rather curious about Jett and his human rather than being afraid.

I'm pretty sure they know they're out of season and in a no hunting area.

They then walked off after a bit after staring us down for quite awhile and we got on with our walk after that interlude with the wild animal kingdom, male herbivore division.

Jett and The Deer

After walking Abby to the bus this morning, I was heading back to the house with Jett and he suddenly starts some serious barking.

After looking ahead of us, it wasn't hard to figure out why he was doing so:

Three deer, standing between two of our neighbors' houses as carefree as could be. The deer were quite interested in Jett's barking but didn't run away and instead continued to stand there and watch as we approached.

Moving closer and getting a better angle, I saw they weren't alone:

Yes, a full six-pack of suburban deer, just standing there and observing the comings and goings of people and canines. No real fear of humans nor any shyness, just standing there watching us approach.

They eventually took off as we got to almost touching distance, and Jett was quite proud of himself for defending the neighborhood from the interlopers.

Not a bad way to start a morning before heading to the office.

Oh Deer.

We had some visitors in our backyard yesterday:

You lookin' at us?

We even had the ultra-rare two-headed deer -

Ok, which way do we go?

There were a total of 5 deer visible in the woods by our house - one big buck who didn't come out for a picture, these two larger does that were about the size of small ponies and a couple others.

Impressively, once they step back into the woods they're very hard to see:

Can you see us now?

The deer seemed quite unafraid of humans, and they seem to have brushed up enough on the local ordinances to know they're in a no-hunting area of the township.

So they're nice to look at and seem to be quite healthy. Hopefully they'll learn to keep out of traffic.

So is .40 S&W the new caliber for Deer?

On the way to work there was a bit of a traffic hold up so I managed to observe the following sequence of events:

It seems a small deer had decided to interface with a truck and it was still kicking but had clearly gotten the worst of the meeting. This was the cause of the traffic hold up.

A police officer on the scene sentenced the deer by the roadside for impeding traffic. The officer dragged it off the road into the woods that were conveniently located there (and was probably where it came from in the first place), drew his service weapon, and BANG.

One shot, one dead deer.

The officer had an excellent awareness of his backstop and didn't miss. Nicely done.

The deer are now on notice not to mess around in traffic in that jurisdiction.

The DCLU (Deer Civil Liberties Union) was unavailable for comment.