A Velvet Stampede

[Wild Skies]

Originally Posted by Jerry Harlow

Bet they didn't feel a thing.

They maybe didn't feel a thing, but I got all four with each and every shot...and I got pics to prove it!

[Wild Skies]

These same four bucks have been running together most of the summer appearing most evenings in the small field next to our home. Their racks, still in the velvet, have undergone further development, heavier and with longer tines. The light colored buck has grown two more tines and is now a 10-pointer. The larger and darker 8-pointer's rack is noticeably heavier than just a month or so ago. This particular deer we've named "Gimpy" because he has a bad right front leg (noticeable in pics #3 & #4) that had been terribly injured by undetermined origin in early winter of 2020 -- was he shot?, caught in a fence?, hit by a car? -- we don't know. At the time he was a smallish 6-pointer, we watched him for two full days laying in the snow and in a pool of blood under a spruce tree in our backyard licking his wounds. His injury looked bad with a dangling leg and a bloody mess. After being under that spruce tree for those two days he somehow was able to move about 100 yards to the south where he laid down again for a few more days continually licking his wounds. He then disappeared. I had thought he had succumbed to those wounds, but here he is, gimping around and living life.