As indicated in the title of this post, Kevin will be adding his annual deer hunting report at the end of this post. Spoiler - there will be dead deer pictures.
We have gotten some snow - this is the last View From the Milking Stand picture that is actually taken from the milking stand. More on the move below.
The past two weeks have been eventful for the goat herd. First, the little lads left us (went to market) and Birch and Tamarack moved in with the does.
This resulted in a lot of upheaval and chasing around as Birch gives his attention to each doe in turn and Tamarack just tries to stay out of the way. Kevin and I have to arm ourselves with a switch to fend off Birch's smelly attentions too. Last Sunday, Belle somehow cut the skin of her leg pretty severely - the result of an escape maneuver I suspect. This sent us on a trip to the vet on Monday for stitches and she is now housed in an isolation pen for a while.
She's doing fine now but sure doesn't care for the daily penicillin shots!
The milking room is almost complete; with the weather getting wintery on us, we moved the milking stand in without waiting on the finishing touches. It's an adjustment for sure; the best placement for the milking stand has not determined. The does of course are opposed to change of any kind although Daisy is taking it the best.
Photo credit to Kori!
Birch puts his feet on the door that opens into the pen to check things out.
I wanted to take a picture of Belle from the door but since Birch was blocking me I took this through the empty hole in the door where a deadbolt would usually go.
The young pullets just don't know what to make of the snow.
One of them spent three nights in the hay shed as we couldn't chase her to the coop nor catch her. Today I made a trail of hay and straw and she finally came back to safety. Meanwhile, the chicks are getting more feathered. This picture appears to be speckled but that is just dust that the chickens were kicking up in the coop.
And now for the hunting update - Kevin is taking over from here:
We were not sure how this season was going to go because we had not been seeing deer around; our expectations were not very high.
This hunting season had a couple of firsts. The first one was sitting in the stand Saturday morning we heard a wolf howl. It sounded way off the the west, but it was still something I had not heard around our house before. It was first time I have been on call for opening weekend for a long, long time, so my hunting was limited to stands that would allow me to leave the area without affecting the others hunt. Needless to say, I didn't see much, just a funny situation where I saw three deer run out of the wooded state land to our south which we call the Brown House. They came running out and right smack into a flock of turkeys. Turkeys were running and flying everywhere. About five minutes later a hunter came out of the woods right where the deer came from. I think the hunter getting out of his/her stand sent the deer running.
On opening morning our lone female hunter, Kori shoot a buck and then about a half hour later and about 75 yards away, our oldest hunter, Dad (Rollie) shot another buck. So far so good. After that it got real quiet, and no more deer were seen that day.
On Sunday morning our newest hunting partner, Trenton had a very unique situation. He had a doe and a fawn come out in front of him and when he shot at the doe, the fawn jumped in front and he shot two deer with one shot. Another first for us and Trenton's second and third deer. As we were texting about getting those two deer out of the woods, another doe came out and he shot it also. So opening weekend we had five deer for seven tags with just four shots fired. I really love it when we don't have to track deer. What a great start. Thank goodness Minnesota is a state that allows party hunting.
We did continue to hunt for the rest of the season but we did not shoot anymore deer. Hopefully we have some stock left in the woods for next year. We did see a few more deer, but chose to let them go.
SO NOW BE AWARE, BELOW ARE SOME PICTURES.
The two bucks
and Trenton with his three
That's it for this post! Thank you for stopping by and a Happy Thanksgiving to you all! Be well friends!
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