The pigs are back...

Well, I went down to the land last weekend with Eli to check the trail cameras and fill the feeders and am just now getting around to posting about it.

We got some rain on July 4th so the pond is no longer dry, but it isn't exactly full and overflowing either. It probably is about 1 foot deep or so right now but that's a lot better than being dry! I'm debating on whether I'm going to put in some irrigation tubing and put in a small watering hole for the future in the event of another drought and possibly to water some trees and stuff as well.

After a month long absence the pigs are back and they brought some friends with them! I got 18 pigs in one picture!

The deer are really hitting the protein feeder and it was completely out of pellets for a couple weeks based on the trail camera photos so hopefully they will come back around now that it is refilled. I'm getting a decent amount of bucks on camera, but I'll have a much better chance of identifying exactly how many different ones once their antlers grow a bit more.

Stickers is a couple weeks behind last year on his antler development. Since I didn't get pictures of him until he had already dropped his antlers this year I'm not sure if he dropped his antlers late this year or what, but hopefully he'll grow as big as last year and hopefully keep his kickers and stick around for a bit during hunting season too!

Here's about the most recent picture I have of him.

I ended up with 2 cameras at feeders that were either out of food or not working properly and I accidentally turned the flash off on my other camera that was at a feeder that was working properly the whole time so I didn't get many consistent pictures for the entire month between checking cameras. I still got quite a few pictures though.

Here's a couple younger bucks. I think the one on the right is a 3 year old this year.

Here are 3 younger bucks hanging out together. The one in the front should be decent this year, but if he makes it to next year he'll end up even better.

I'm pretty sure this doe was still pregnant when this picture was taken on June 25th. Whitetail deer have a gestation period of about 200 days so if you go backwards that means doe would have conceived the 2nd week of December or later. This either means that the rut was later than some folks think for that area, or there were more does than bucks and this doe was bred on her 2nd cycle. More than most of you wanted to know I'm sure!

I haven't gotten any pictures of fawns yet this year, but I did get this odd picture of what appears to be 5 does together going by one of my feeders that wasn't working at the time. It seems odd that the does would be together this time of the year so I'm not really sure what to make of it. Some appear to be smaller and they could have been yearlings last year and they might not have fawns of their own this year but it still seems odd to me.

I got pictures of a bobcat, coyote, armadillo, skunk, raccoons, turkey, deer, pigs, quail, dove, squirrels, etc. this month so plenty of activity going on.

If you want to check out some more they are at http://padens.com/v-web/gallery/album08?page=6 and the new ones start at the bottom of page 6 and go onto page 8. On the 4 cameras I had out I actually went through over 2,000 pictures and most were obviously left on the cutting room floor.

That's about it for now.

Nathan