Another weekend at the farm. We're ready for hunting season

The new blind is finished except that we didn't get it painted. I don't think the animals will care and it isn't supposed to rain this week so that's not a big deal.

We found interesting stuff this weekend.

We were using a circular saw in the carport of the old house when we looked up and saw a mule deer doe looking at us from about 50 feet away. She stood there for a while and then bedded down. We talked to here and took her picture, then went back to work. She napped for an hour or more before she got tired of the noise and then left. Mule deer aren't exactly afraid of people.

I checked out the remains of the two deer we found dead near the house. One skull was completely clean and didn't have any smell left at all so I brought it home. The other skull, from the deer that had been under the roof on the porch, was mostly clean but still smelled a little. I didn't want to leave it on the ground because I thought a pig or other critter might carry it off so I got some wire and put through the eye holes and went looking for a place to hang it up. There are several cedar trees in the yard and the mule deer bucks have have torn all the lower branches off them up to about 5 feet above the ground while scraping their antlers. I walked up to one and was reaching up to put the wire over the limb when I noticed a large wasp nest hanging from the branch. It was one of the paper wasp nests that have cells in them bigger than a #2 pencil. It was about 8 inches in diameter and covered with wasps. Wasp spray is an important part of civilization. My grandfather used to take several sheets of newspaper and fold them into a fan shape, then light the edge and run it over the nest. If you went at the right speed it would kill most of the wasps and burn the wings off the others so they couldn't fly. The larva would be ok so you could use them for fishing bait. I prefer using spray. Needless to say I found another place to hang up the skull. I hope to go back and get the nest next week.

I also found two snake skins in the grass. Both were fairly skinny snakes and over 5 feet long. Unfortunately, both were woven into the fairly tall grass and I couldn't get them out without tearing them up. I did get the head of one of them and it still had the eye lens covers, or whatever you call them.

The game cam showed a number of whitetails, all does or small bucks. They eat just fine. For every deer we got a picture of there were four or five feral pigs. That is unusual for us. I guess this year we will probably be putting pork in the freezer to go with the venison.

I forgot my camera this weekend so I'll have to wait for my dad to send me some pics to post.