The only time you see them during the day is when you cut down the tree they are living in.

About these flying squirrels, the one above makes a grand total of 3 that I've seen in the daylight. The first 2 were together, and that was 40 years ago. I was just hunting through the woods both times. I've seen a good many after dark. I guess there is a fairly good population of them?

Here's another little buck I bumped into the other day. Not sure?, that makes 7 or 8, maybe 9 that I've scoped over this season. I did see a bear yesterday, maybe 150 or 175 pounds? It didn't look right, kind of scruffy looking, maybe it had mange? I looked him over through my rifle scope with the safety off and all, it wasn't black and glossy looking one bit. Glad that I didn't take a shot at it.

There are a lot of flying squirrels around me, and I have a special dislike for them. They've chewed up a lot of my furs. You can hang furs by a wire from a rafter, and they are safe from rats and mice but not flying squirrels. I exercise lethal control in my shop. Peanuts make a good bait.

Well, I took a shot at one the other day. He was nothing like the Buckzilla from Wisconsin. Biologist Teet's stopped by today, he was short on time, but I'm going to ask him to age it by it's teeth the next time around. I'll guess that the deer was 2.5 years old? We'll see.



And we do have at least one buck that survived the 2 weeks of buck season. I'll tell you there's not much activity on the west side of the mountain. Just not much sign of anything now.



I'm starting to get feedback and reports from our local hunters, seems like about everyone around is telling me that they're not seeing many deer. Less deer than last season.

Buck deer season is out, but bear season is in now, and the dog and I hunted across a couple of ridges yesterday. I'll tell you that years ago, that was a hotspot, one of the best spots on the mountain. To the best of my knowledge (and the dog too), we never jumped a deer or bear. I had to get to work early, but we were on the move about 4 hours. My dog won't run deer, but she'll perk up. She can hear and I can't. She's got good eyes too.

Does the dog track the bear or does it just indicate one is around? I cannot imagine a man and a dog sneaking up on a bear.

Our woods are a lot different than your area of Canada. Here's a picture looking up Spring Hollow.



My dog is getting old, she's no bear hound my any means, but she'll get stuff up on it's feet. She doesn't hunt very wide, she might be up front or off to my right or left and out of sight for 10 or 15 minutes but she checks back in pretty often.

Just one guy hunting through thick brush or laurel, you move a lot of game that you don't even know about. We have a lot of places around here where you can shoot ridge to ridge, if you jump a critter on the top of one ridge, sometimes you'll get a shot while it's going up the next ridge. Another reason that I take my dog with me, she's been stuck here at the house for the 2 weeks of buck season. She barks and whines if I leave without her.

Here's another one that survived. Kind of scruffy looking but otherwise it seems to be healthy.

Here's a look at bear damage in a corn field. That picture was taken from a mile or better from the field.

I didn't realize bears were such a problem in corn.