Deer hunting year in review 2014.

I haven't posted much like I generally do during hunting season, so I am going to give a year end review.
 
My season has been full of up and downs.
 
I have had the best year ever of deer on trail cameras, I pulled my cameras yesterday and got over 6,000 pictures and videos (for the first 3 months starting in august I ran 3 cameras, and the last 2 months I ran 5 cameras). Something that cool was only 1 picture of a coyote, but every card pull I had a fisher. I would say with out counting through out the season easily over 20 different bucks on camera from august till yesterday. Granted not all are legal, not all are giants, but I had 4 good shooters on my hit list. I also got for the first time 6 bucks in one photo
 

 
Here is one of the many pictures of the fisher (not super common where im from)
 

 
Like every year once velvet comes off most of the bucks vanish, in velvet I get my best photos and videos.
here is my hit list, I had to snap shot some movies so it would work on this site.
 

 

 

 

 
slightly different view from the buck above
 

 
My archery season deer sighting were below average, about 1 deer per hour. I seen 7 bucks, 5 that I could count points on. 4 of those 5 bucks were legal, I passed up 3 of them and it worked out on the last day of archery at 4:45pm I shot the biggest buck I seen this year of hunting. I am very happy with the deer, I shot it on a piece of property that my wife and I bought that spring, we hope to build a house of it someday. It is only 10 acres and 1 acre is huntable, so its pretty neat to have it work out the way it did.
 
Maybe a 110" deer give or take, 6.5-7" g2s and g3s Nice PA 8 point. Likey been a slob next yearif I had passed it. But its hard to pass on a deer like him on the last day of archery 
 

 
I had a doe tag, which I save for a doe that I see injured (generally I don't see any injured but if I do I like to have a tag.). So first day of rifle I hunted with my dad in a tower stand I built it been at least 15 years since I hunted next to him in a stand. Opening morning at 7:30 three doe came through, then at 9:15 a 4 point followed by a doe and fawn walked through, few minutes later a 15" 8 point came through and my dad shot it. While gutting it we had a bear walk in on us to about 30 yards. second bear I see in the wild, and topped off my day. I had enough time to take a photo before it ran off. Bear are not real common where I hunt, I generally get them on camera every year but just don't see them in person. I had to get going home after that, I was aloowed to hunt till 10 due to a newborn at home.
 

 
The last Saturday with new snow I hunted till 9 just to see whats up, my dad and his friend each shot doe at a little after 8am and left the stand to help and called it a day.
 
Over all weird season, above average camera action, below average hunting action... does that equal a average year?  First time ever where I work 4 of the 6 hunters shot a buck, all of them were nice deer. It seemed the people I talked to said deer sighting were down, but they said they are hearing a lot more bucks killed than normal. It is what it is. I had a good season. And my card pull showed many deer made it through where I hunt.  

Very cool stuff anzo!  Thanks for sharing, and nice buck!  
 
Our season (my son and I) was similar to yours - tons of trail cam pics, although only one buck on the camera.  Does and skippers everywhere.  
 
Once the season started, deer sightings were consistent, but not a lot of deer.  Pretty much a 1:1 buck to doe ratio while we were out.  And never saw more than 2 adult deer on one hunt, although plenty of little ones around.  

It's refreshing to finally see a postive post on here.  Thanks for sharing your story and congrats on a great buck! 

Great pics.....
I am starting to think its easier to hit the daily number than get a nice buck......From my end
 

Slow season for me but got lucky that first Sat. in Nov.
 
Sightings were down but, I didn't scout much at all and didn't put in as much time due to conflicts with all the kids other activities.  Relied on "old faithful" spots that luckily came through.  Only saw horns 3 times, I think and the last one was the AR legal one I took (and saw a smaller guy that same day). 
 
Season may have been decent for me after that but I never stepped foot in the woods again after I took my buck.
 
Hoping to get the kids more interested this coming year and getting more time out in the field with them in tow.
Santa didn't bring the double ladder stand so I will be procuring one of those soon and possibly a ground blind.  Might be better easing them into the ground blind hunting..

My cuz has one just like that, minus the porch, on his property up north.
 
Can't make it TOO easy on them to start, though.
 
Something about napping next to a wood burner looking out windows just doesn't seem like hunting to me.
 

Sombody has been watchi' a little too much 'Tree House Master' on T.V.

Or, suffering from a early dose of 'cabin feaver'. (lol)

Seriously, that is a nice 'man cave' in the air. Gotta go now, I hear Home Depot callin'.

A research group led by Donald Waller, a professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, used a pair of strategies to look at the ecological impact of deer. First, they resurveyed 62 sites across northern Wisconsin and Michigan in 2000-01 that were first studied by former UW-Madison Professor John Curtis and his students in the 1950s. "This showed us just how the forest has changed during a time when deer were becoming much more common, but it did not pinpoint the deer themselves as the cause of the changes," Waller says.
Waller's group later examined plant communities inside and outside 17 fenced "exclosures" built to keep out deer but not smaller mammals. The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.
Waller—together with Katie Frerker, a former graduate student in his lab who earned her master's degree here and is now working for the U.S. Forest Service in Duluth, Minnesota; and Autumn Sabo, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology—discovered that many of the plants commonly seen in the early surveys now mostly occur inside the protective exclosures.
Where deer have been common, ferns and grasses—as well as several nonnative plants—have become more abundant. Deer greatly reduced regeneration of native trees, the growth of shrubs, the height of forest understory plants, and the abundance of flowering plants that are neither woody nor grassy.


Read more at: [link=http://phys.org/news/2015-01-deer-account-long-term-forest.html#jCp]http://phys.org/news/2015...g-term-forest.html#jCp[/link]
 
 
I know I have read a story similar to this one; I just can't recall where?    Hmmmmm, I wonder.

There'd be a little more food left on my plate if it were locked behind a fence too, n'at.    Just sayin'.

Nice Mike..................  Congrats to you and yours!  Here's to yinz.