Iskigamizige-Giizis (April) Maple Sugar Moon niiwo-giizhigad (11) 2019

                     A two-part post-April 4th & April 11th story.

I've lost Camera No. 3.                                                                                              
I’ve found Trail Camera No. 3
 
We have three trail cameras and I know where two are, but for the life of me, I can’t remember where I put No. 3. I’m still looking.    (I make a note in the pocket-size notebook I carry.) 
"Write down the location of each camera.”
 
I found it when I wasn’t looking for it and since then I have followed through and written its location on the dry marker board.                             

Whoa! is that the ???

I’ve been to all the likely places along deer trails where every tree looks the same. 
“Use bright-colored bungee cords to tie cameras to trees.”
 
An old adage is that a deer knows every tree in the forest--they don’t, but they do quickly recognize change, as do I, albeit subconsciously. I wasn’t purposely looking for the camera when I just noticed ‘something’ different on a tree. “Whoa, is that the ???”

I was on an evening walk where I intend to plant some lilac seeds. I think they will make a good thick windbreak for some aging spruce adjoining the north side of our yard. Deer don’t eat lilacs either. https://www.hunker.com/13427846/deer-resistant-lilac.

And no, I don’t have an app on my phone to locate it for two reasons. First because the cameras are too old and cheap, and second, because I don’t have a smart phone, so I’m back to trying to remember where I put it. 

I have an old friend in Roseau named Mac Furlong, with whom I talk at great length about deer hunting and a lot of other interesting stuff. Just as it was he who alerted me to these inexpensive trail cameras when I was just getting into it, he was also the guy who told me about the smartphone app feature he has on his new cameras. Because he is built similarly to a tree, tall and spindly, I have recognized girth growth around his trunk since this smartphone app acquisition--aging aside--that I contribute to the app’s resulting inactivity i.e., the elimination of the need to physically go outdoors to check the pictures on his trail cameras.
                                                                           

Yabadabadoooo! It's Camera No. 3!!

I remember I was kind of disgusted about Camera No. 3’s performance the last time I tried using it, as it’s not easy to determine if it’s going to dependably work or not. Plus, soon the trees will be leafing out and its invisibility will increase. Where have I put that camera?
 
I’m a Duracell-brand battery guy. I’ve never liked Energizer batteries, but when I discovered their Ultimate Lithium batteries that were good to 40 below zero, I had to try them out. On top of setup failure, finding a dead camera during the winter months, when I had installed new alkaline batteries just weeks to a month before, was very disappointing. Now I know why people had remarked they have so many old non-working cameras in their junk boxes.

Some days I feel pretty inept restarting a trail camera. Our cameras don’t have any easily identified signal or indicator that says, at a glance, that it’s ‘on’. Each camera has a set-up system of up and down adjustment arrows for powering on and entering time and date, day, video or still pics, hi-resolution or lower resolution, seconds of time delay between still pics ... Yes! These cameras are so slow the fastest time between still pics is fifteen seconds. For dumb! A lot can happen in front of a camera in fifteen seconds; also, the longest video setting is one minute, when action may go on for ten.

Camera No. 1

I’ve looked in my car and truck, under, and behind the seats. My wife figured the truck would be the most likely place to lose something given all the junk I keep in it that she ‘presumes’ is there. (Don’t know where she gets that idea.) But I’ve looked there. 
"Not in truck."
 
Looking for lost things outdoors does have its advantages in that, most of the time, the places you look get ‘cleaned up’ for a while. The bed of my old farm pickup, for example, got a huge organizational make-over. No kidding, last fall, I took some 2x4s and made areas to store my two chainsaws, side-by-side, with little compartments for one-gallon jugs of mixed gasoline, two-cycle oil and chainbar oil. Off to one side, is a strongly made storage compartment for chains, ratcheting devices and jacks. The other side is reserved for tools, etc.

Camera No. 3 is the oldest camera we have and, until its disappearance, was the most dependable. A cheap-under-a-hundred-bucks trail camera, it took some decent images on a 24-hour basis, even though there was no built-in audio. But when I saw crystal clear videos and still pics of deer, bears, gray wolves, fox, coyotes, and eagles swooping past on other people’s more expensive trail cameras, I was highly envious of such great technology. Maybe next year we’ll get better cameras, but for now we have our other two. 

"Research new cameras."
                                                                                                                 

New good cameras cost big bucks. 

http://www.reconyx.com/product/Outdoor_Series#HyperFire%202
                                                                                                 

Camera No. 1 watches the house. Now, you might not think it’s going to see much wildlife beyond an over-eager UPS or Fed-Ex delivery person zooming in to deliver a package--and zooming out in a hurry to get home, but where we live we’ve seen bears near the same doorway as well as a bunch of raccoons and skunks. It’s been almost sixteen years since we’ve seen a moose, but only a few hours since deer have moseyed by to fertilize the yard and look in our windows.

Camera No. 2, I put up near a possible bear den  we discovered last November while we were hunting deer. It’s a place where strong winds have tipped some trees over and exposed the roots, making a natural dugout that bear or other animals like snowshoe hare, cottontail rabbit, jack rabbit or raccoon, skunk, fox, or mink might like to burrow in. There was a lot of poop and claw marks on the ground and on trees there last fall, so it seemed likely this was ‘home’ to them--at least for the winter. 
"Bring gun next visit."
                                             

Or mink would like to burrow in

 Not a bear den. It’s all full of water from the now-flooded creek along which it was it was located.  Found more bear sign and resulting damage in the red splendor crab apple trees right in our yard. The wife mentioned her suspicions about the bear-damaged trees last fall, but I didn’t take her seriously. (I hate it when she’s right) But now, I see their activities were not all caught on camera. 

"We need more cameras."

As the spring melt and much warmer temperatures came on, I started carrying a gun on my hikes. I found a popular website that a young woman and her hiking friends had started.

White Spruce planted in 1974

https://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=fbHJQxqmVk4

I know a person who works for the Department of Natural Resources in Minnesota and is outdoors, unarmed, all the time. “FYI, it is a good idea to make some noise so you don’t startle a bear (especially one with cubs), but you have a much better chance of being injured in your car (or getting cancer) then you do by a wolf, coyote, or bear.  If the wolves or bears were looking at you as prey, they’d have eaten you by now!  I carry a gun when I’m hunting, but I never worry about carrying one any other time I’m in the woods.  I just make a little noise now and then.”

I doubt there’s another farm  place in rural Minnesota that’s been photographed more, all year around, than ours. I take dozens of digital images each week even though they may never see print nor be appreciated by anyone else except myself as I walk through tree plantations that I’ve planted, when they were but seedlings. 

                                                                      

I see all the work we’ve done since 1974, planting trees, shrubs and grass, burning, mowing, as ‘re-creating’ wildlife habitat from what had been cleared as farmland, rather than ‘creating’ wildlife habitat. Although most of the trees are planted in rows, they follow land contours across the field, each one an echo of the other, and hardly a straight row of any length exists.
        

                                                                

One plantation planted in 1990 & 92 is actually two plantations; one planted on top of the other. The first plantation of 20,000 suffered the effects of drought; the surviving numbers were thought to be very low. So, not following all the same rows, I replanted an increased number of trees. Some new rows were planted perpendicular to the previously planted rows primarily because of areas then too muddy to plant using the tractor. Wet planting conditions required the remainder to be planted by hand, so I had to hire an available planting crew from the southern U.S., through the DNR/Forestry.
                                                                         

After two years, it became apparent that tree losses weren’t as great as anticipated, and the tree rows that now grew between the other rows, became impossible to maintain or mow; a consequence being, fast-growing red willow over-topped and choked many seedlings out. The lack of sufficient sunshine, slowed growth for many years and created virtual island mixes of white spruce, red pine, green ash, birch, and hybrid poplar, with wet areas in-between, that appear as natural woodlands; only the occasional traffic noise on County Road 8 discounts its location. However, wildlife seem to love it as much as I do.  

     

             

 

In 2012, we planted a variety of 16, 500 trees, its rows too follow the land contours, each echoing out from the other. Learning my lesson from the 1990s plantation, I immediately began flagging all the rows using several thousand 36-inch long florescent-pink colored marking flags to denote rows, not individual trees. Each spring--about now--I purchase marking flags from our local SWCD and walk the plantation looking for green trees or old flags so to reestablish mowing paths to be mowed in late August after the nesting season is over.

Mowing usually lasts  2-3 weeks. Many trees have grown too large to allow my tractor passage between them now, and will over-top the willows around them, suppressing their growth.
 
Turn about is fair play.