A Great Weekend!

We are experiencing some wonderful fall weather here in Southern Indiana.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, we're preparing for deer season and today, we went over and put up a couple of deer stands.  These metal ladder stands will help us get the height advantage on our quarry.  Below you can see one of the stands.  This one will probably be used by my son, Rob.  My stand is over on the far end of the field in another good spot.

This ladder stand is in some prime white-tailed deer habitat.

Yesterday, Patti and I spent some time shooting her revolver.  It's a little snub-nosed revolver in .38 Special caliber.  It's quite manageable for her, although she said the trigger pull is a bit rough.  She did very well with it, slaying the cardboard box at which she was shooting.  We'll be doing some more practicing with it soon.  It was time well spent.

Shooting practice went well!

Of course, we picked up a few more persimmons while we were there.  I noticed that a buck had made a scrape directly under one of the branches of the persimmon tree.  A buck deer has a pre-orbital gland that he uses to deposit scent on small branches that are head high or so.  He will find a small hanging twig, then work his head around so that the the twig works around and slightly into that gland and leaves a trace of strong smelling, waxy material on twig.  Directly beneath that, he will add a 'scrape' where he paws away the vegetation to bare soil.  He then leaves scent on the site by urinating down the inside of his rear legs.  The urine runs over two more scent glands, the tarsal glands, and leaves his unique scent on the scrape.  All of this sounds a bit crude, but the 'girls' love it!!  A buck in rut will have a route of these scrapes and will check them regularly during the breeding season to see if any receptive does are paying attention.  Obviously, I asked Patti to skip over that site as she picked up persimmons!

Picking up persimmons