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Always on the Move

By Alli ArmstrongJanuary 22, 2014

LAST UPDATED: May 1st, 2015

After an unsuccessful evening of bow hunting, my family and I came home from the woods and sat down to eat supper. While we were talking about the evening’s hunt, the phone rang. The call was from my friend Dalton who lives a few farms away. He had shot a nice buck and was calling to tell us about it and to see if we would take pictures of it for him. (His mom is a wonderful photographer but she was out of town at the time.) We were very happy for him as he told us the story of his hunt. He and his friend went bow hunting that evening and just like us, the deer weren’t moving. They’d only seen one doe walking to the tree stand and didn’t see anything else all evening until right before dark. Finally, they heard a deer walking through the woods and when they could see it, they realized it was a great buck that they had nicknamed the Wicked Six. With only about five more minutes of shooting light, Dalton took a 45-yard shot on the buck. The Wicked Six was down in no time! Dalton said he had trail camera pictures of this deer before but they were all a side view of him. Once he got up to the deer, he realized how unique the buck was. He said he was a three and a half year old, tall-tined six point and the tines almost crossed like fingers at the top.

ON THE MOVE 1

Dalton Conn with his tall-tined 6 point buck that traveled over 6 miles from farm to farm

We couldn’t wait to see the buck and finally Dalton arrived at the house to get pictures with his unique deer. As soon as he let the tailgate down we all knew exactly which buck it was. We had watched him all summer at our farm! It’s amazing how much deer can move throughout the year from place to place. On our farm where I live, we put out trail cameras to monitor the deer movement. Usually by the time deer season arrives we have a pretty good idea of the quality and quantity of deer we have running around. Of course, there’s never a guarantee since they are wild animals and have their reasons for traveling, especially during the rut. From about the middle of June, we started seeing this deer pretty regularly on the trail cameras around the farm. He liked to stay in one of our clover fields and spend the evening there until dark. We got used to seeing him and then around the middle of October he just disappeared. We hadn’t seen him in person or on the trail camera since then.

On the Move 2

Alli caught the side view of this buck on her trail camera at his summer home on the Armstrong farm

It’s so amazing to see how far this deer traveled which was about 6 miles and that someone we knew was able to successfully harvest him. While sitting in my tree stand I can’t help but think about some of the great deer that have come and gone from our farm and there’s no telling what happened to them. Some of them might even be back later on. At the same time, I look forward to seeing the deer that will travel to our farm that we may have never seen before and the opportunities I might have to put my tag on them.

Alli Armstrong
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