2008 Opening Weekend - Part 2

In part 1 of my opening day story, I described the chestnut oak ridge where we were hunting. We located a dominant tree on the tip of the ridge that looked perfect. The nuts were falling by the bucketfull, the ground was churned up, there were fresh droppings everywhere. The best part was that there were at least a half dozen rubs and a couple scrapes in about a 30 yard circle around the dominant tree.

We picked out a tree and Rambuck climbed up first with the video camera. At about 4:45, this deer came into view headed toward our little ambush. Unfortunately, he decided to stop and chew his cud for a while before he got there. I was standing with my bow ready to draw but got antsy after about six minutes of watching him and decided to take a peek through my binoculars, which turned out to be a big mistake... Needless to say that ruined our day. I call this video clip the I've Been Busted Blues.

It may be hard to see, but at about 1:00 on the video, the buck is chewing his cud and breathing very hard as if he had been running. He hadn't been breathing hard just seconds earlier. Does anyone know whether the heavy breathing is part of the normal digestive process?

On another note, Rambuck called from Illinois to say that he videoed a hunter on a hot dominant tree this morning. They had about twenty deer come in to feed. We'll get the video up when he gets back to town.