- Joined
- Apr 25, 2007
- Messages
- 3,473
Finally got out for a while to play in the new snow we got over the past week. Quite a bit of the stuff, I think we got about 8 inches. It's settled a bit, and today was rather warm -- 32F when I left the house at about one in the afternoon. There was a nice South breeze, but it was definitely not a cold day. A couple jackets and some long johns kept me almost too warm for the hike.
I headed up to a nearby wildlife mangement area that I've hiked at a few times before. Usually see some sort of wildlife here, and today was no different. Spooked a few deer, saw a bucketload of squirrels, and one little surprise at the end.
Today was one of those gray, dismal-looking days. The snow and cloudy skies melted together. The best way to tell where one began and the other ended was by the thin, dull grey-brown line of trees that marked the horizon.
There's a bit of an unofficial trail that leads partway into the WMA. I followed it for a while. The trail disappears about smack in the middle of the WMA on top of a ridge that runs most of the length of the place from North to South. The trail drops down from the road through the valley on the Eastern side, then climbs back up to the ridge.
When you get to the top, it looks a bit like this:
The Nebraska Game & Parks commission cuts a lot of the native grass on the ridges here to get some extra hay. It also helps to control the spread of eastern red cedars, which will take over pasture like this in just a few years.
Looking for some deer tracks? This is a great area to find them. Tons of deer around here. A friend of mine used to hunt this WMA until he graduated and moved off last year. There are a lot of great places to put up stands. I neglected to remember that it's muzzleloader season now, and walked past a couple guys waiting for deer to walk by.
RAT Pack RC-3 and the fruit of an osage orange tree. The deer were digging them up, but wouldn't eat them. Having cut one open before, I don't blame them!
There are deer somewhere within a couple hundred yards of this neat little spring every time I come here.
Looking up the small ravine to the spring itself:
This is just a bit interesting to me. It's about two feet deep before you hit the gravelly bottom where the water from the spring wells up. I was poking around with my trekking pole and just about went in here.
On my way out, I found this little fella hanging out in the middle of a grass field. The primary reaction of a possum caught in the open is to sit still and, of course, play dead. This picture was taken from about 5 feet away. I nudged him with my trekking pole just to see if he was alive, and the answer was yes. Quando omni flunkus moritati, little buddy.
I headed up to a nearby wildlife mangement area that I've hiked at a few times before. Usually see some sort of wildlife here, and today was no different. Spooked a few deer, saw a bucketload of squirrels, and one little surprise at the end.
Today was one of those gray, dismal-looking days. The snow and cloudy skies melted together. The best way to tell where one began and the other ended was by the thin, dull grey-brown line of trees that marked the horizon.
There's a bit of an unofficial trail that leads partway into the WMA. I followed it for a while. The trail disappears about smack in the middle of the WMA on top of a ridge that runs most of the length of the place from North to South. The trail drops down from the road through the valley on the Eastern side, then climbs back up to the ridge.
When you get to the top, it looks a bit like this:
The Nebraska Game & Parks commission cuts a lot of the native grass on the ridges here to get some extra hay. It also helps to control the spread of eastern red cedars, which will take over pasture like this in just a few years.
Looking for some deer tracks? This is a great area to find them. Tons of deer around here. A friend of mine used to hunt this WMA until he graduated and moved off last year. There are a lot of great places to put up stands. I neglected to remember that it's muzzleloader season now, and walked past a couple guys waiting for deer to walk by.
RAT Pack RC-3 and the fruit of an osage orange tree. The deer were digging them up, but wouldn't eat them. Having cut one open before, I don't blame them!
There are deer somewhere within a couple hundred yards of this neat little spring every time I come here.
Looking up the small ravine to the spring itself:
This is just a bit interesting to me. It's about two feet deep before you hit the gravelly bottom where the water from the spring wells up. I was poking around with my trekking pole and just about went in here.
On my way out, I found this little fella hanging out in the middle of a grass field. The primary reaction of a possum caught in the open is to sit still and, of course, play dead. This picture was taken from about 5 feet away. I nudged him with my trekking pole just to see if he was alive, and the answer was yes. Quando omni flunkus moritati, little buddy.
