Anyone who follows the Outdoors Guy Blog will recall my story from last winter entitled; Misfit Duo an unlikely winter team – the story of an orphaned fawn who teamed up with a lame buck.
Beginning September 2011, I started seeing an orphaned fawn button buck (I called Peanut) hanging around behind my place. He was a spunky little bugger but I had concerns that he wouldn’t make the winter on his own.
Before too long, though, a 3 year old buck we called Andrew showed-up in the back property with a badly broken leg. The two deer made the biggest misfit team I had ever seen, but somehow it worked.
It was a symbiotic relationship you might say…
The two deer watched out for each other and as winter progressed Andrew’s leg injury healed very slowly; until the coyotes started running him all over the place.
Eventually, by the end of February, poor Andrew was done running and could no longer get-up. A neighbor and I found him lying in the snow barely able to move so I made the decision to have him put down. Since I live in a ‘no discharge zone’, the Ottawa Police Service were called to do the job.
Andrew’s little buddy Peanut remained there on his own until, fortunately, he teamed-up with another big healthy 4-year old buck on the property.
That was early March and I hadn’t seen Peanut again since.
Over the past month or so I started putting deer feed out again but only hoards of raccoons and one loan doe have stopped-by for a nibble…
This past weekend I decided to test-out a new Tinks product Terry Rohm sent me…it is the Tinks Power Scrape – Combo pack, which contains a scrape dripper, string and a supply of ‘synthetic’ buck lure which is totally legal in Ontario for hunting . (Even though I do not hunt deer around my place and could have legally used natural scent if I wished) Power Scrape is meant to capitalize on the buck’s natural sense of curiosity during early season.
So anyway, Saturday morning I get the new Power Scrape all ready to go near my deer feeder. I tied it to the lower branch of a tree approximately 10 feet to the left of my feeder and about 18” of the ground. I cleared the leaves away on the ground underneath and squirted a few extra drops to get it going…
Sunday morning I was curious to see if anything showed-up for a visit and I instantly noticed fresh deer tracks around the Power Scrape and deer feeder.
The tracks weren’t huge and I suspected the doe was back to snack on some of my deer pellets, but I pulled the SD card from my Bushnell Trophy cam overlooking the site, and brought it inside to check-out the images.
Here’s what I found!
After nearly 8-months, Peanut the fawn finally returned for a visit, except this time he’s a much larger yearling buck and sported a darn nice first year set of antlers.
An 8-pointer no less!!
After going through the photos, I could tell right away it was Peanut and was glad to see he was doing well. Evidently this deer is one tough little bugger, who has overcome the odds with the makings of one dominate buck indeed.
So, was it just a coincidence that this deer showed-up at my place (with his nose down btw) the very night I put out the Tinks Power Scrape, after being absent for nearly 8-months?
Seems a little too coincidental if you ask me.
Well, whatever the case..welcome back little buddy!
Outdoorsguy